The TAT Forum

Rose: I don't know how much of that will happen in our lifetime, in our era. But this was a threat in the middle ages and maybe in ancient times. Even Pythagoras was supposedly attacked. Socrates was executed. But the hint has always gone out among the esoteric groups that you should never instruct openly. You should never go out and try to let the masses hear this knowledge, because it has an effect of irritating them, and they will attack you.

Some people blame that for the killing of Christ. That he was basically lynched by people who had heard him talk and who somehow just turned against him. Because this was something which just might destroy their entire pleasure patterns, or their political patterns.

There is an esoteric maxim that you'll come across if you get into esoteric reading: "To know, to dare, to do, and to be silent." And we wonder about that.

And of course, I was silent for many years. But I believed that the percentage of ears was increasing. Partly because more people were getting educated — plus the fact that some people's ears had been opened by perhaps a fractional drug experience. (I'm talking about intellectual ears, not physical ears.) This has an effect of giving a person the perspective of having a new state of mind. You see that it's possible to have more than one state of mind, more than one way of looking at things — a new perspective.

So if they didn't get really destroyed by the drugs (LSD), some of the people who had a slight taste began looking for spiritual values. And I ascribe the biggest part of this spiritual drive that we have today to half a million or a million people who picked up a little sentience of it under some experimental drug routine. It just cracked the door for them.

Now unfortunately this doesn't open the door. But these people are the ones who flock to a lot of these movements, especially if the leaders are charismatic or if the thing is emotional. And again, a microscopic few of them will gravitate toward something serious, once they become disgruntled with what they finally find out to be not the final answer.

Question: Mr. Rose, would you mind in our final few minutes to maybe recap your development, let's say your achievements, and then the disappointments, that kind of thing? Maybe give us a background where you started — would you be interested in that?

Rose: Yes, all right. I considered myself to be a very devout Catholic when I was younger, and I was looking as a child for an objective God. I studied to be a priest, in fact. And I left that institution because . . . I began to be uneasy about my convictions, in relation to the people in the seminary.

I left the seminary when I was in my teens yet, and I went to college. I joined or went to different churches because I still had this direction or vector in my system. This was my business — I wanted to find out who God was. And I accepted a priori that God was a person — it was somebody I was going to meet.

So I looked high and low. I joined all sorts of cults. I got initiated into any one of these Asian groups that would initiate me. I went to Spiritualist churches and I thought that this was a very good approach — because here I might be able to talk with people who were dead and who were now themselves talking to God.

Well needless to say, I didn't find the answer there. Every place I went I was disillusioned that much more. I found fraud and trickery at every turn, and I found that the people who were telling us that they had God in their hip pocket really had money in their hip pocket. And I became very discouraged.

But as a result of this intense effort - I think as a result of this intense effort — when I was around thirty years of age I had an experience. And this experience answered my questions for me. And it has not diminished. I have not outgrown it — I don't think you could ever outgrow it when you have that type of experience.

But I was unable to communicate it. And with what few people I did try to communicate, I realized that they had no cognizance of what I was talking about. So in most cases I gave up. And it wasn't until I met one man, Paul Wood, and read a book called Cosmic Consciousness that I realized that other people did have these experiences, and they did talk about them.

Question: Prior to this you had a feeling like you were a little bit odd or you didn't fit into society?

Rose: I felt that there was no use talking about it, that's all. No — I fit into society very well. I had learned when I was among a certain group of people to talk their language. And I could hold a job. I've raised a family. I've been a contractor, I have worked at many things such as a chemist, a metallurgist, an engineer of sorts, and I've held all sorts of jobs.

But one thing I'd say as far as its effects upon me — I never had any desire to own the world, or to really make history.

My big desire was the hope that I would find somebody. And I would curse the darkness when I was a kid about 21 years of age and say, "Boy, every place I look I find these phonies, these hucksters. And I'm wasting the valuable years of my life when I could possibly be out raising a bunch of kids, or getting drunk and enjoying myself, if such is enjoying yourself."

The temptation was always there naturally, and I was putting it aside saying, "Wait — maybe you'll find this thing someday." But everyplace I went I ran into hucksters. And not only hucksters but people of really bad intentions.

So I came to the conclusion as I was cursing the darkness that if I ever found anything, my next step would be — if I ever found anybody that wanted help, I'd try to help them. That was my obligation.

Consequently I try to balance my efforts today. Not to be too evangelistic but nevertheless to go out and say, "If there's anybody out there who's got this problem and a little bit shaky about it, a little bit lacking in conviction that he's on the right track, why maybe I can give you a few hints. I've been down the old trail and I know a few hazards and so forth. And maybe we can accelerate your search a bit — this is advisable if it's possible."

Have I covered what you wanted?

Question: Yes, I think that sort of sums everything up. And I really appreciate having you here today.

The Will to Define, by Bob Cergol:

Question: If all conscious entities or 'water drops' do not survive... but simply return to that Something from which they sprang, does it matter what we do since we all end up the same (according to [the American Zen master Alfred] Pulyan)? Every individual completely dies; a few surrender to or accept what they ARE NOT before death, but the majority do not. So do those who die in ignorance return to Something eventually anyway without knowing it? If it is Awareness vs. oblivion, I have to say that from my place sometimes it looks close to being a toss-up. Just wondering if you have any kind of sense about this from your new perspective....

You suggest that it may not matter whether a person realizes who and what they really are, because final Truth or Reality could not be conditioned upon their having or not having a realization and so death would have the same outcome. But you then go on to describe an individuality that wishes never to die while simultaneously wishing for the freedom from having to define itself! (And in the process escaping the suffering of having to watch, in judgment, that individual doing a poor job of being an individual.) What a conundrum!

It seems to me that your own words answer this question of whether realization matters. (It obviously matters to you!)

An individual has no choice in deciding to be or not to be. We experience individuality and until proven otherwise know only that we exist as an individual. Some individuals consciously ask the question, "Why?" The question asked must mean the answer matters. (I would say the question asked is proof that there IS an answer.) Every individual life is an expression of that question!

To exist as an individual--and consequently, TO FEEL THE COMPULSION FROM A SOURCE UNKNOWN--TO BE THAT INDIVIDUAL--while at the same time NOT KNOWING JUST WHAT EXACTLY THAT INDIVIDUALITY IS, or is supposed to be, means that there is NO CHOICE for that individual being BUT TO DEFINE ITSELF TO ITSELF. (Identity spins identity.) That is its nature, period. That is the direction of all thoughts and actions by the individual.

The individual mind says, "I feel myself to BE, therefore what am I?" Everyone is grasping and groping. Everyone is engaged in activity to define their identity. Some consciously ask the question. Some don't. Some take great action while some don't. In ALL cases their lives are the very expression of that same question and the attempt to answer it. Some dichotomize the self and define the individual that is, as he who sits in judgment of that other character who isn't making the grade and otherwise just isn't going to make it in this world…. Some run around in ever decreasing concentric circles until they finally stick their head up their own ass and just disappear! Some are too busy defining who they are to see what they are not.

From the vantage point of our human mentality this issue seems to me to be the ultimate paradox. Does it matter to the rose bush, if each and every bud blossoms? Are not each and every bud and blossom, BOTH, a manifestation of the hidden life that is the essence of the rose bush? Can that essence be divided? If that essence is indivisible, then are not both the bud and the bloom a perfect expression in varying form of that essence? Does the bud ask whether or not it should attempt to bloom? It does not and cannot. It is its nature to "try"--knowingly or unknowingly.

I believe this "compulsion" is itself an expression of, or an echo of, that Being from which all arises, when that Being is manifested in particularized form--the dust funnel in the desert….

We've all heard it said and written that everyone is looking for the truth. Everyone is trying to define their self. It is simply their nature. It is simply an expression of that which IS. Perhaps it is why Pulyan said, as Lou reminded us, that this is the very reason for the existence of the universe. Reduced to words, I would therefore have to say, it matters. If it doesn't matter, then everything else matters less.

The Other Side, by Bob Cergol:

What sound was it that you first heard
That made those ears your ears to hear?
And in such hearing spawned the fear
Of the other side -- the silence here.

What sight was it that you first saw
That made those eyes your eyes to see?
And in such seeing spawned the vision:
An "I" in loneliness imprisoned.

What movement made first filled your breath
And made that breath your own to breathe?
And in such moving brought the gasp
That one such breath will be your last.

What shape was made with flesh and bone
That made this form your form alone?
A mortal form where thoughts resolved
That "I" as form will be dissolved.

What story told first touched your heart
And made its theme "a thing apart"?
That heartfelt telling does portend
Where flowed life's rhythms -- all will end.

What words were they that left those lips
Through which the Source became eclipsed?
In darkness, separate shadows grew
As animated forms, with speech imbued.

What choice occurred that made that choice
The one to which you lent your voice?
And in that lending broke apart
From That -- the center of your heart.

What thing is this that strives to BE
An individuality?
-- It's just an echo of the other side
In which all things here do abide.

From the other side your being came;
On this side came identity.
From the other side there comes the call
"Your self is here, not there at all."

On the other side of "I am this"
Is "I am not," and "I am nothing."
But in that nothing is your Being
And in that Being -- everything.

Author's note: The original inspiration or idea behind it was from a meeting here a few weeks ago, when [D.] was talking about the "I Am" or "Who Am I" meditation/mantra he was doing and I made some remark about there being "something on the other side of 'I Am'" that his doing of the meditation/mantra was not revealing because that point of reference was contradictory to the point of reference for the meditation. The contradiction was that his meditational point of reference, at least in part, was one of serving the personal identity, which always wants to build on identity. The perspective of the "other side" is ruled out in advance by this personal viewpoint since it would amount to a total acceptance of the personal self's mortality. The idea was to paint a picture of how the "I" arises out of experience and loses its connection with the Source and then re-finds itself. When and how did your sense of "I" first appear? What was the first sound that awakened "I" in you and closed your ear to the Silent Source? What sight first cemented you in this vision of reality that blinded you to the True Light?