1990-0215-Are-You-A-Robot-Ohio-State

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Title	1990-0215-Are-You-A-Robot-Ohio-State
Recorded date	Feb. 15, 1990
Location	Ohio State University, Columbus. Ohio
Number of tapes	2 cassettes
Other recorders audible?
Alternate versions exist?
Source	Paul Schmidt
No. of MP3 files	3 files - 46 min, 46 min, 46 mim. Side 4 is blank
Total time	138 minutes = 2 hrs, 18 min
Transcription status	Extensive notes
Link to distribution copy	http://distribution.direct-mind.org/
Link to PDF	http://distribution.direct-mind.org/ Or try http://selfdefinition.org/rose/
Published in what book?
Published on which website?
Remarks	This is different from Are you a Robot - Baltimore - 1986 http://direct-mind.org/index.php5?title=1986-0307-Are-You-a-Robot-Baltimore
Audio quality	Very good
Identifiable voices	Al Fitzpatrick, Chuck Conrad
URL at direct-mind.org	https://www.direct-mind.org/index.php/1990-0215-Are-You-A-Robot-Ohio-State
	For access, send email to: editors@direct-mind.org
Revision timestamp	20240407174727

to check

File 4 located, only 2 min long. Must add to transcription file.

Not to be confused with 1986-0307-Are-You-a-Robot-Baltimore on SearchWithin.Org

Notes

Audio quality very good.

Present Al Fitzpatrick, Chuck Conrad

Also titled: "An Evening with Richard Rose"

File 1

45 min 35 sec

00:00

Well, we’re going to talk about some things here in the esoteric department. And there’s a field of inquiry that I’m sure some of you, if not nearly all of you know something about. Consequently I want to develop a communication, not a lecture.

Esotericism is a very wide subject in which there are many preconceptions, and there are many theories and beliefs about it. so to begin to talk in a particular vein might not ring a chord, a response, from most of the people here. So I’ve come to the conclusion that the best thing to do is have you express your interest.

01:17

For instance, I don’t – I remember the poster that was put up [which?]

see “robot-poster.jpg” at http://selfdefinition.org/rose/posters/

my lectures have been on Zen or something very similar, of an esoteric path, that required the application of the intelligence, the application of doubting, proving, not believing, ascertaining – instead of wishful thinking.

00:51

so there are different things you may be curious about

I’ll begin by introducing myself

Started as a Catholic very much of a fanatic only a child right out os grade school

Greek and Latin Summa Theologica

I left the seminary when I was seventeen

finished up at college near Wheeling

looking books and people who knew something

talk to the dead

chemist

Dover, Ohio White Lilly Chapel cement block building

minister from Steubenville, Ohio

about eighteen people in the room [same number of apparitions]

lit with a red light it wasn’t thing

it stood about “this” high. [Bob Cergol says “no more than three feet”] he called it Midget – it had a name it responded to. It called me Baldy, which was to kind of ridicule, make jokes with me.

05:42

But some of the people there – there were some phenomena there – I don’t like to go into all of them. If you’re curious about that – I’m no longer curious about it.

But naturally – we wanted to verify it, number one, that it was real; we told the fellow that before we went in.

06:00

And he became indignant. He was from Muskegon, Michigan. Drove down here. Charged three dollars apiece. So we counted the heads in the place and I think it was around fifty-four dollars that he would have got, for his trip from Muskegon, Michigan down here; so I thought, “This man can’t be in too much of a racket, because it’s not worth it.” He should have had a hundred at least to pay for the trip.

06:22

But he was still kind of irritated because we were doubting him. He says, “This thing don’t work good unless you believe.” So strangely enough, the two “people” who came out [were a num and a priest] – I gave him nothing about my background, I was a total stranger to him, I hadn’t seen him materialize before. This meeting where he had materialized these things before was in a minister’s private home in Steubenville, Ohio,

6:48

they had run some test on him gave him other clothes

Catholic priest and nun

I tried to speak to him in Latin

that’s the language of the Church for a thousand years

vestments – black cassock surplice band around his neck that looks like a scarf, a stole

“Is Jesus over there?” “We’ve heard he is here.” Or “We’ve heard his name mentioned,” like he was a casual visitor or something.

08:53

But anyhow, I went away with the idea that I didn’t need to do any more research and talk to the dead, because the dead didn’t seem to know much

09:36

Any answers you got were related to the questions you would ask.

The reason I’m going through this – I dropped that inquiry. I went as far as you could go. You’re lucky in your lifetime is you see a genuine materialization. They are real; there are entities – don’t let any psychologist ever tell you there are not. They’re very real. And they – you can get them in a position where they will manifest, you’ll see them.

09:54

But I decided I’d look elsewhere, and I got into yoga. In those ays there were no books on yoga

years later I got into raja yoga

ran into some very profound people who were interested in raja yoga, tuning certain nerve centers of the body to revelation.

based in India

Beas Amritsar or someplace

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beas,_Punjab

Beas is a small town in the Amritsar District of Punjab state of India

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radha_Soami_Satsang_Beas

10:55

Although they were very wise men I discovered there was, in my research into the Hindu methods [actually Sikh] that they were sort of making certain sensory organs doors to spiritual awakening. For instance we had a fellow come over here not too long ago and he got quite a movement going

most of them had an “ng” ending

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi – Transcendental Meditation

auto-hypnotic

regardless, there is still

everything has a good beginning. How it turns out later depends on the salesman you hire to spread the word. And they always turn it into a profit, if possible.

12:31

Well, this is one of the things that you cannot, should not, ever – and when I was a young man this is one thing I made up my mind to. I would never pay for the truth. There is no price on the truth. There is no amount of money that you could pay that would equal its value. So why take less?

The pretense is that a man could do as he pleases all his life – and believe me, there are a lot of people

“Rose, zap me. How much do you want?”

they have to have a certain mental, physical condition that enables them to receive something

nothing will penetrate

even Christianity was polluted, right after Christ died

St. Peter took it upon himself to punish

Ananias and Sapphira Acts 5:1-11

they both dropped dead, and that was the punishment for keeping nickels out of the collection basket. So I got to wondering, why did they need a collection basket to begin with?

14:26

this goes down to a commodity that you’re going to pay for

so somewhere we put a stop to this

Radha Soami

Kirpal Singh

decided that Kirpal Singh was a very honorable man

15:04

I had an experience

my hair was falling out, my teeth were falling out

“This is a big ego trip. Why should I be favored, to make this breakthrough, when there are millions of people in the country. And what me think I’m entitled to it?”

15:37

I should get married, raise some kids

I didn’t have any luck. So it was procrastinated

16:06

But every once in a while I’d find myself in the library, finding a new discovery, a new book that had some revelation in it, and that would throw me back on the track

18:18

So I went out to Seattle, Washington for the express purpose of getting married

of course I didn’t know what I was marrying

But anyhow, nothing came of it. There’s a whole amusing story behind it; but we agreed to disagree. Instead of coming back east I took a job

started meditation, had rented a room

all I did was work, go to the library, read a bit maybe, and come home and meditate, and think. And one day I got a pain in the top of my head

I thought, “Boy, how are they going to get the body back to West Virginia?”

I went out the window of this rooming house or hotel, whatever it was

Cascade Mountains

“That’s a nice place to go.”

I went to the Cascade Mountains I went up in that direction

17:52

And when I got there things changed; when I looked back I saw humanity, I saw a pyramid of humanity – people climbing the mountain

some intelligence portrayed everyone that ever lived, coming up that mountain

“Is Richard Rose there?”

I found him

18:29

I didn’t realize it until years later, that you can’t have two of them. One is the observer and the other is what was observed – a figure identified as my mundane self.

18:42

It narrows down to this: I discovered, and anyone can discover, that the observer is not that which is observed

you can study your actions but they are not you; they are objective, when you study them. When you put them outside and put them into the line of focus, they are objective

So that after awhile you get to thinking, “Who’s looking?” And then you realize who’s looking.

the one realization was that this was absolute

confusing titles of these experiences

fall in love

growth

how many have heard of Gurdjieff?

Gurdjieff was one of the greatest psychologists that lived in our time. We have no psychologists today. We have people who play with ideas but who know nothing about the human mind. Gurdjieff did, because he was a very good observer.

20:53

And he said there were five classes of men

some were surrealistic

The first class are the instinctive people. The instinctive people are the people who live to live

grab the pleasures of life, which the philosopher finds to be illusion

but they are real to him, they are the only reality there is: sex, booze, fighting, struggling, dominance

what changes him is the love for another person

and all of a sudden his instinctive nature is gone

focus on a guru or creature like Jesus Christ

22:33

nevertheless he will be changed by that emotion, once he forgets about himself

he doesn’t decide it; something decides it form

the instinctive people don’t go to any church

from this emotional class of people you fill your churches

addicted to the word love

anybody who protests [to love]

the day I got married I said to my wife, “I will never lie to you. And I will never say that I love you. Because I don’t know what you would understand by the word love. But whatever is in me, I will prove to you – by my actions, not by my protestations.”

23:47

And this is the way I think people should live

24:01

But regardless, the emotion is good and it’s part of the programming

so that the race will go on, and millions of people will remain on the face of the earth, for purposes that people little realize, what that real purpose is.

when they see what they are, that they’re not guided by common sense

talk to 100 ministers

none of them believe what they’re preaching

it’s just a method of making a living

I went into a temple, or church or whatever they call it. And this minister was up in the front and he pointed my out . I had just come in and I was standing in the back

“There’s a lady coming to you.”

And he described my mother down to a detail

“Does that sound like your mother?” He was psychic, he had some ability

“You’ve got the description but you don’t have the facts; she’s still alive.”

So you discover things like this along the road, and it breaks up your emotional attachment to a belief.

go on the march for a religion

you see in the newsreels the same thing in Iran, where a whole city of people are pounding their chests and are ready to die

26:30

So you look a little deeper. And then you find there’s a class of people living – and have lived for over a thousand years – it goes back to the days of Kapila

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kapila

when the United States only had Indians for inhabitants – American Indians – Kapila was chiseling his philosophy in stone or papyrus or something. But he left a message behind

springboard for all the religions that came out of India

Patanjali c. 2nd century BCE

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patanjali

one of the great figures, the patriarch behind all of the holy men

27:30

a whole lot is repetition: one guru tells a disciple and the disciple becomes a guru

I didn’t like to use Indian terminology

what the real meaning of these words are

28:16

I had a friend – I worked with him right here in Columbus, Ohio, in fact. he had done a lot of deep reading, and he used to use these words like sahaja nirvikalpa samadhi. And I’d say, “Shut up. Don’t bother me [with that]. tell me what you’re talking about, don’t give me these words.” Years later when I was thirty years old I knew what he meant – what he was talking about – he didn’t know what it was either; he was quoting it out of a book. But I knew what sahaja nirvikalpa samadhi was.

28:51

And the difference between that and kevala nirvikalpa samadhi

man by the name of Ramana Maharshi

from a place called Aruncala [sp]

Paul Brunton wrote some books about him, and that’s the only reason we know about him

29:38

For instance there was a book written by Richard M. Bucke called Cosmic Consciousness

Steubenville minister and his wife next time we had a meeting she came with this book and handed it to me

30:20

Incidentally, Bucke is the kevala samadhi – to him the world was transformed

internally he was thrilled, but he was not necessarily transformed

drop a bucket into the well bucket is drawn out

sahaja is where the drop of water falls into the ocean

eternally one with the ocean

a very good analogy for the Western mind to pick up, because the Indian words meant nothing

31:24

So that is the – that happened when I was thirty years old. Ad a few years later, I would try to contact people

got into the contracting business

I learned after awhile to keep my mouth shut

been smoking the wrong type of dope

32:17

But I got in touch with a Zen teacher. And I didn’t get in touch with him – because – Zen also – this is the maximum experience in Zen.

a lot of words used, like enlightenment

I’ve heard people who have taken acid and said, “I’ve been enlightened.” So will he if he sticks his finger in an electric socket, hr’ll be enlightened too

32:59

So you have to define what happens. And I didn’t expect to go any deeper into my experience, but I wondered, how could I talk to other people. How do you talk to other people? How do you – first of all, know that they have the same vocabulary

this was back in the, well, 1947 – 1950

We were having rough times. In 1938 we went to war – at least there was a conscription of men – and from that time on there was pretty much trauma in the country. nothing was moving much

1938 Hitler invades Austria

1940 began peacetime draft http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscription_in_the_United_States#World_War_II

Nothing was moving much except – for instance here in Columbus we were putting out the beginnings of the Black Widow, the Helldiver airplanes

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_P-61_Black_Widow

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtiss_SB2C_Helldiver

in Columbus, Ohio; they had their factory out there. So everybody was busy working in the war planes

34:29

And then after that we had reconstruction, and there were no books on the market

no books available on this type of philosophy

everybody should go into defining themselves. And why don’t they define themselves?

Well, they have a little hunch that that preacher i phony

San Antonio, Texas, met a minister there

wrote a thesis on Spirtualism

I said, “Why do you go to church?”

and this one man said to me, “To keep my kids out of jail.” I thought, “Boy, this is sad. You’ve got to twist this kid’s head around 360 degrees to keep him out of jail? Maybe he’s better off dead.” Who knows? Maybe he’ll go to jail, because of his fanaticism

36:19

But I saw it was very difficult to communicate. Because number one, the few books that came out, very few people had read them. The stuff that sells today is still the same as it was then: romance number one, adventure number two, and detective mysteries, that sort of thing

36:52

And I decided that Zen had the best language; the language was not a preaching, it was of asking questions. And this is the technique.

when a kid is studying mathematics

So consequently, what you have to do, you’re working for the benefit of the individual, not for membership in your church.

his waking up is your pay. And if you want pay besides that, you want to get into another business

I came to certain conclusion

number one there’s no price on truth; you don’t pay preachers.

pay for the electric

the other thing is, you do not become impressed by rituals, robes, titles, you know – this is nonsense; we’re all creatures of the mud, hoping to find that there’s a spark inside that pile of mud

38:51

So when you set these guidelines in your searching, you’re not going to be dragged back into an emotional thing,

the next, after the emotional level is the intellectual level, and that’s where you start saying, “Well let’s do mathematics, astrology numerology

measuring the distance between places in the great pyramids of Egypt

or even read futuristic type of science fiction

39:46

Once you start to block that out, you find there’s not much of a field left

incidentally, the path to realization is not the accumulation of wisdom. You cannot learn anything when it comes to these final truths. You can only become it. You do not learn the truth, you become the truth.

And after many years of discounting the Bible and the Christian faith

something in the Bible

“I am the way, the truth and the life.”

he didn’t say, “I discovered the truth,” he said, “I am the truth.”

But looking in hindsight, I didn’t have an experience, I was an experience. What was left of me was an experience.

41:07

But you do not learn. Learning is confused by other learning. Learning is confused by egos that would like to believe that the rock candy mountain is more important

41:27

Zen enabled me to transmit. I don’t want to tie up what little time we have tonight and go through all the phases and tricks of Zen

Q &A

I’d like for some of you to ask some of the questions that are running through your head right now. Because this will be the beginning of the real communication here.

Q. you talk about the 4 questions – where are you at right now? more stable?

R. Yes, but why do you think I could translate to you how I define myself? What you want is a definition of my defining, isn’t it?

Q. Yes

R. These are things, you know, does a man – do not people go down the street sometimes and point at a man and say, “That’s an honest man.”? Or some girl, and say, “That girl’s a virgin.” How does he define her? How does he define her as a virgin? He’s right. He may be absolutely right. Percentage-wise – he may miss one out of fifty or so. But of course he doesn’t pick fifty virgins – there aren’t that many. But how does he do that? how does he know it?

43:17

And that’s what I say. This is the – it’s a good thing you ask that

basically, what you will know about me is through your intuition

if you’re asking some way to ascertain this

I’ve done my best to give it to you with the word intuition

there are no psychology books that say, “This plus this equals that.” We study the human mind. There is no – for instance

then all you have to do is pump that brain full of chemicals

change the behavioral petterns

changing the direction of their social lives

44:36

there’s not a psychologist in the country who knows what thought is

what sanity is, or insanity. Get me one who defines it

normal curve, one clear off to the left

The purpose [?] of defining in the final analysis will be when you become one with the subject – or the object, whichever you wish to call it.

Q.

[tape ends 45:35]

[break in tape]

File 2

R. No, because you feel like a worm on the earth. And you’d like to be something a little better than a worm. And you want to know whether there is something better up ahead, rather than just living like a worm. We all hunger for definition. Every – you go to tramp on a worm and watch – they try to get away from you. They’re not welcoming ecstasy. We’re programmed. We’re programmed to squirm like worms. But we are not programmed to define ourselves. And this is where it takes a strong curiosity, a strong desire, a strong determination to embark on a subjective search.

And of course as you go along you apply – some things are manifest – you can go to a certain religion, and you’ll find that the reason why all the people are in that monastery, for instance – you’ll find the least common denominator, or most common denominator. And that’s scientific appraisal then. You say, “Well, now, I judge – I don’t want any parts of that monastery because these people are not searching for their definition. Or they’re not preaching the truth, they’re running a business. And this isn’t what I want. I don’t want a business, I want an answer.”

01:18

I maintain that there’s an urge in every animal to figure out, “How did I get here? What’s happening? Where am I going?” And that’s the reason, it’s programming. If it weren’t for that curiosity – I imagine, I sometimes think that the engineers were reluctant to put that quality in the man or the animal, but they had to, or he’d have stumbled over cliffs and stuff and died. He would have had no fear. He had to have a fear and an instinctive pattern even so his intuition would say, “Don’t walk too close to the edge.” Or, “Don’t tangle with the bigger cats.”

Q. You mention about meditation and your experience. What exactly do you ...?

R. Meditation?

Q. Yes.

R. I have a strong belief that nearly all the meditation things put out today are in the wrong direction. Because the instruction is to meditate, well, for instance, this TM thing was “bong,” “gong,” and so on, to meditate on a noise. You’re also supposed to be upbeat or supportive and meditate on happiness, bliss and all this nonsense. We’d like, we’re always hoping for some eternal titillation. As I said, heaven to a lot of people must be a dream, of where there are these little cherubs flying around through all eternity with these old feather dusters, tickling their bottoms as they pass, to keep them happy for centuries. That’s heaven.

03:13

So we’re stuck with a lot of these definitions, implications – they imply that we’re going to be happy forever. Why? What’s happiness? When you suffer so much pain and somebody takes away the pain, you’re happy. And then when you indulge too much in that which takes away the pain, you’ll get unhappy again. So that cycle is not observed by too many people. They still go back, stick their head in the gears and suffer pain, and the only solution for it – and of course that’s the lifestyle of the alcoholic in particular. When he starts drinking he has to, he tries to get away from it and he goes through tremendous suffering then, and the only thing that will ultimately cure it is another drink. And he feels pleasure then; he’s in charge again once more whgen he gets that drink, for a few hours.

I hope I’m not confusing you.

04:21

Q. Your experience in enlightenment is interesting, but do you use this as some sort of baseline to live your life? Or do you ??

R. I have no trouble living my life. If goes by. It goes right by me.

Q. Does it affect the way you live?

R. Not too much. They have an old saying in Zen, that before you have your experience and before you reach things, the mountains are mountains and the valleys are valleys. In your experience the mountains and valleys are no longer there. But when you come back, the mountains are once more mountains and the valleys are valleys. Meaning that when you come back, believe me, you’ll still go to the toilet like any other animal. There’s nothing divine, quite yet.

05:18

I’ve got a hunch at what you’re asking for is a change, does it affect a change on you. I’d say so, yes, because the only sane excuse I could give for coming here and talking to you tonight is that I’m crazy. Because other people aren’t doing it. So I’m not with the normal curve. There are only one in a million people who believe in following this exactly the way I follow it. So consequently, I don’t live the way other people live

Q. Do you meditate?

R. No. No, no.

Q. Did you stop?

R. No, I never stopped. But I don’t do it deliberately. It happens.

Q. When you’re sitting down? When do you meditate?

R. I’m a peripatetic. I got my best thoughts walking. Because I was hypothyroid, I’m apt to go to sleep if I sat down. And of course this yogi posture doesn’t let you go to sleep so much, because if you do you might twist a leg when you roll over. You back yourself up against a wall and you won’t fall back that way, but it keeps you awake a little better. No, But meditation should only be done for the purpose of observing pain in the past; don’t meditate and think you’re going to make yourself happy, that you’re going to change the face of the universe or appeal to some mysterious character called God.

07:15

You know, they said in West Virginia one time, the best definition I ever heard of God, was when one of these guys came up to vote, and they said, you know, they had a literacy test. And he said, ‘What do you mean?” And they said, “Well, you’re supposed to have a certain literacy test before you can vote.” And he said, “Okay, I guess I’m literate.” “Well, who was Abraham Lincoln?” He said, “He never lived around here.” “Did you ever hear of George Washington?” “Nope, he’s not one of my relatives.” “Did you ever hear of God?” And he said, “Is his last name Damn?” So that’s theology in West Virginia.

I interrupted your thinking, right?

08:10

Q. Do you feel you’ve learned all the truth now?

R. I know everything, but I don’t know the number of hairs on your head. So that’s my answer to your question.

Q. What’s the meaning of your life?

R. I don’t know. I can’t describe it. I know what I’m trying to do. I’m trying to find – and I know the mathematical percentages of people who will do the things I’m doing, will find the things I’ve discovered, and they’re microscopic. I know that. I hope sometime before I die that I have met somebody – I may already have met him; we have people in the groups – that will pick up the same realization and do the same thing. That’s all you can do. The people are out there, and there has to be some encouragement to – because one of the first things that happens to you is you say, “Hey, who am I to discover anything? Why would it be me?” There are 200 million people in this country alone. One out of 200 million. Well, according to Bucke only one in a million. According to Bucke only one in a million found out the kevala samadhi, the cosmic consciousness. So figure it out, the people who actually have the experience