MEDITATION

by

Richard Rose

Meditation and Visualization

Observation of the Thought Processes

Going Within

The Genesis of Thought

Published by Pyramid Press

1686 Marshall Street, Benwood, WV 26031

Copyright © 1981 by Richard Rose

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Printed and bound in the United States of America

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Meditation and Visualization

The world has grown suddenly meditative. Today’s generation discounts the value of prayer, and has receded, in many instances to the foetal position, mentally and physically, to regain a feeling of that once pleasant amniotic insulation from the troubled world. And while in this position, the meditator assumes a prayerful attitude, praying to himself in self-directed mantras, and praying to his body by directing his attention (perhaps downward) to certain nerve centers and imaginary inner lights.

This latter process, I refer to with the word visualization. When man grows tired of work he retreats into mummery. When man cannot prove for himself that he has a spiritual essence, he postulates it. And postulating comes so easy that he postulates all sorts of soul-components, and with them he builds newer and newer concept-structures which he hucksters to the public as the Truth. He feels a warmth in the seat of his pants and decides that his Kundalini is there.

He concentrates on the area, and sure enough, things happen. He is told by a teacher to imagine a petaled flower which the teacher calls a chakra. He is told to concentrate on this flower and pretty soon the flower will start to turn. Another teacher tells him to concentrate upon a space between his eyes, and slightly above. A little investigation would tell the student that this is a spot used by hypnotists, because when the eyes are turned in that direction, the person is easily hypnotized.

Every year a new guru with a new gimmick comes out of India, trying to impress upon our minds that the only thing of value is the attainment of spiritual power via their method, while at the same time they seem to busy themselves with collecting considerable sums of our financial power for their trip back home.

How many of us have paid into these movements, only to leave the movement with the realization that a few hours peace is not the answer to the frustration that results from social hypocrisy and religious pretence. It is true that almost any form of meditation, in which the body is held in one position long enough to subdue its turbulence, will promote a similar lessening of turbulence in the mind. Pleasant chanting will produce pleasure. Soft and smooth chanting is soporific. Incense will make us tranquil, an unpleasant stench will send us into reverse action. Militant chanting will produce anger and violence. We are learning how to play tricks on ourselves without really knowing it ... or else we are allowing others who know the mechanism to use it on us for their own profit.

If you cannot supply the relentless dynamic energy needed to propel you into Real consciousness, to solve the problem without rationalization or vain hypothesis then, by all means, concentrate upon a chakra and visualize yourself a heaven. You can get the same effect by concentration upon wall paper that pictures scenes of intricate foliage. People have been known to visualize themselves into the wall paper, shortly before they were institutionalized. Some enter mirrors. Others take imaginary playmates into their bodies.

Visualization is not only non-spiritual, it is dangerous. And under the heading of visualization, come not only mental pictures that are induced, but also the imaginary sounds, ticklings of mucous membrane, or odors that are not spontaneous. I was once initiated into a sect that placed quite a bit of emphasis on sounds. This was called shabd. Now it seems that it is unlikely that a group of intelligent men who were highly respected in their own country could be deluded by any process, which in this case was listening, without eventually coming to their senses ... if they are really in error. Yet I have heard this very observation from many who joined the sect in this country. They appraised the leaders of the sect and found them to be intelligent men, and never gave a thought to the fact that educated and intelligent men are often duped quicker than the man with the hoe who believes that he can be duped, and who consequently is very suspicious. The intelligent man, or quasi-intelligent man, is really duped by the belief in his own intelligence. He believes himself to be too intelligent to be duped, and if a system or a teacher appeals to his intelligence, meaning the vanity of his intelligence-pose, then he will often respond like a trained seal. And his response results from the fact that most men of scholastic background, have been trained like seals, not for or toward an ability to think, but toward an ability to be self-confident, and if possible to mimic and transmit to others that which was taught with the same self-confidence.

When I first heard the instructions of the sect (which I prefer not to name) I immediately thought to myself that any instruction of process of listening to sounds, or concentrating upon the third eye, might well result in some phenomena which were new and not previously experienced. However I wondered if, once I witnessed these phenomena, I would ever be able to determine their realness, knowing all the time that I may be creating them by visualization.

This brings us to a dilemma in regard to meditation. On one side I advise the business of going within to find the real self. On the other side I warn about that which some sects would certainly call going within. This paradox is cleared up somewhat when we realize that we cannot go within by visualizing first that which we expect to find.

Now there are some spiritual meditational exercises, performed by yogis or supposedly performed by yogis as a means of study, in which the yogi does not visualize, but only fixes his attention on an object to be studied. Some have spent weeks, months and years, concentrating upon the sun, or on some planet and they have returned from that meditation with information, which we suppose is the source of and genesis of Tibetan and Theosophical cosmologies, since the writings antedate both telescopes of range, and rockets.

This method of meditation is valid. Even though the results may not be accurate, or may be disproven by science later to some degree. The error of margin with this method will always lie in the efficiency of the meditator as a receiver. Results may vary if the meditator, who in this case is something like a radio trying to focus on a spot for reception from that spot, has poor filtering apparatus or discernment, or has inadequate voltage to get a strong impression.

And so it only seems valid then that the yogi should first use this system upon himself. In  the process he may discover and correct his voltage, and his filtering and recording mechanisms. If he is lucky, he may take another step, with improved sensors, and come to know about himself and his essence.

In testing phenomena, of an extra-sensory nature, we find that the spontaneous phenomenon is more valid than the manufactured one. So that in spiritualistic investigation we find that the ghost that is manufactured in the medium’s cabinet can be one of three things (maybe one out of more). It can be a spurious cheesecloth creation. It can be an ectoplasmic extrusion emanating from a medium’s body prefashioned by a mental image, or prefashioned by entities in the image of our mental images of relatives. It can also be an ectoplasmic extrusion which the spirit of one of our relatives inhabits, for the purpose of communication. On the other hand, an apparition met without expectation or appointment, as a phantom on a lonely road whom we accept not as a phantom but as a friend that we presume to be still living, but who has perhaps shortly before at some distant place, died, is certainly a more valuable argument for spirit travel.

The same applies to the phenomena of meditation. Those results which are manufactured or which happen in the process of visualization, are not as valid as those which are spontaneous, brought about by no particular preconditions. This is a very important point.

The man who creates by visualization, merely creates more trouble and frustration for himself. If we read Eliphas Levi, we find that his entire system of magic was one of visualization. Although he was perhaps the most sober and successful magus of the Western world, he gave it all up in later years, and returned to the church of his childhood. Aleister Crowley did not give it up, and his last words seemed to verbalize his gnawing confusion.

The Hindus believe that a man produces samskara or unreal mental images of lasting duration. The Tibetans believe that man's beliefs are the cause of his suffering in the death bardo, because he creates them while living. Jung believed that frightening mandalas described by people who were mentally disturbed, were actually mental impressions inherited through the genes, which he classifies as racial memory. The Rosicrucians claim that strong emotional habits actually build and nourish entities, which follow man from incarnation to incarnation, so that we now have the concept of samskara creating or conditioning samsara.

Some students have remarked that if any entities exist, that they should not be discounted or ignored, but should be given credence and study. In other words, if there is another dimension, it seems likely that knowing that dimension may help us to better know this dimension. The fallacy to this suggestion lies in our inability in one lifetime to study, correlate and understand all of the phenomena in our present physical dimension ... much less add to that task and confusion by trying to correlate the infinite factors of yet another dimension.

We must first know the self before studying the universe. We must somehow hold off the torrent of suggestions and even entity-incursions that would fill our inward meditational path. I know that there are entities and that they are as real as this physical dimension, and possibly equally as illusory in the final analysis.

To hold off these influences, whether they are thought-forms, archetype mandalas, or entities, certain protective mechanisms should be adopted to shield our delicate perception mechanism, and our spiritual quantum from invasion. This invasion can in its least dangerous form, be distraction.

What I am saying is that a person should prepare himself for meditation, before doing it, by first knowing how to avoid distraction or possession, and by secondly learning about the mechanics of certain systems of meditation which may not be conducive to really knowing the Self.

I want to take some time here to insert some basic, elementary hints on meditational preparation. It is better to meditate with a small amount of food in the stomach than to be full. If the meditation is one that is associated with fasting, successful meditational results will be achieved only after the desire for food has gone away.

You should not meditate if you are sexually turbulent, if you are in physical pain, or in any strong emotional mood, unless you are fully aware of the mood and wish to analyze its cause.

To protect yourself in meditation from entities, follow the thaumaturgical law of abstinence for the prescribed period. It is better to do this in conjunction with advice from someone who has been down the path before, since each personality is different, not to mention the variety of entities or distractions that may be attached to each personality. For this reason, no advice in this matter is considered given at this time on a general basis.*

* See Richard Rose: Energy Transmutation Between-Ness and Transmission

We come now to the mechanism of meditation itself, which might be called the TAT system of meditation. We come to the problem of meditating upon the Self without first postulating a Self, and aiming our meditation in that direction.

Up until now, a great amount of consideration has been given to Zen, because Zen is the only known system that recognized that nothing should be recognized before careful validation. It has been said that the koan-system is a system of finding sense by the intense application of non-sense. However, a system of irritation by virtue of the intense application to non-sense, will suffice to shake the mind loose from convictions and preconceptions in a hurry—but it will not methodically lead the mind away from zero, once zero-conviction-state has arrived. Zero-conviction-state does not equate with a state of no-mind which would exalt us to the knowledge of Nothing and consequently Everything.

Even still more remote to Satori would be a system of meditation which involved physical irritation, such as Keisaku, or to be specific, the beating of the student while he is meditating. This method, is a method of confrontation, and confrontation is not transmission by itself, nor is it a form of meditation. It has recently been used as an assembly line type of discipline aimed at bringing people to Satori in groups. It is not written that Buddha attained Satori, by having someone beat his back while he was meditating ... since he was alone under the tree ... so we must suppose that this came into practice later—possibly upon the arrival of Zen in Japan.

Confrontation of many different sorts may be necessary to provoke thinking, but confrontation is a practice in itself, it involves others, meaning a teacher, monitor or colleague. Proper meditation confronts the self, but only by mental observations of personal behavior and experiences. A separate paper shall be written on confrontation and transmission,* that part of TAT which involves cooperation with others.

* See Richard Rose: The Monitor Papers

Getting back to Zen, it is my belief that meditation should involve the fixing of the attention upon thoughts or reactions to thoughts, or reaction to experience, which are just other forms of thoughts. Any meditation that involves the fixing of the mind upon material spots or pleasurable experiences, or states leading to pleasurable or peaceful mental experience, are techniques whose method and end-result are both relative, and will not yield the Absolute experience which is Satori, or which is Cosmic Consciousness.

How much hope can we have therefore for a system which pretends to take us all the way with an even more relative and mundane method, that of punishing the body to arrive at no-mind. We are again faced with the prospects of a tired and weary body-mind creating a condition to escape the punishment.

While the koan may be a good means of meditation, it is in itself not the only method. A system which enables the student to confront himself actively with increased self-analysis, is a more tangible method, because the problem is always before him. To focus the attention upon the koan Mu, which I presume to be meaningless, at least in our language, is to fill the mind with failure, hopelessness and dismay ... but it may paralyze the meditational vector, and leave the student with a blank mind for long periods of time, or cause his mind to escape to other areas.

A system of self-observation, and self-analysis, in order to be effective must involve conflict instead of dismay. By going back into our memory we will remember unhappy moments or times. We do not contemplate happiness, but focus our attention upon unhappiness. We do not consciously analyze these moments, but sit and watch them as we would a movie re-run. The more recent memories may be still fortified with emotion, and we may not understand the cause of the unhappiness which we created for ourselves at the time, so it is best to go back and begin with childhood where memory allows, because childhood memories have lost a lot of present-self identification.

We can remember childhood scenes with more detachment, because in our development in time we have changed almost to another being, which can look back upon the person of our youth as another person. However, when we remember a recent fight or emotional trauma, our adrenaline may even surge up again, with the same convictions that caused the trauma in the first place. So that nothing may be gained, and some mistakes may be made again by the process, unless we are aware that this may happen with recent memories of a traumatic nature. This is the reason that realization takes years! We have to cool off the experience-memory.

We take an incident from our past, for instance a moment of anguish when someone that we loved turned their back to us and spurned our friendship. We find in evolving from childhood, that the tolerance of our parents was greater than that of our fellow-adolescents for instance. The personality that escaped with many injustices to the family will not be tolerated by youths from other families, or from strangers. We find that a home atmosphere existed, to which we adjusted and upon entering school, or a job, the school or job had a different atmosphere, and the people therein had different states of mind, with which we now had to cope. And our new viewpoint, may for the first time take into account that things are not right just because we managed to get by, by falling into the spirit of a group whether that group be a family or a nation.

A very valuable department of experience upon which to meditate is that which deals with afflictions to the individuality-sense. As a child we are generally experiencers, and our self is recognized as that which is experiencing. We experience uninhibited joy and pain from our parents and teachers without resentment. As we get older we develop the idea that we are individuals who are able to cause things to happen. This generally occurs before puberty, but comes into full being with adolescence. And of course, the individual immediately encounters other individuals with the same convictions.

We still wish to experience pleasure, but we now find that it must be inhibited pleasure. And we become dismayed at the size of society and the hopelessness of our drive for individuality. We go about looking for friendships, all the while hoping that our friends will help us to hold on to our own individuality.

Of course, since our motives are selfish, we are exposed as being selfish, and a process begins in which we try to conceal our selfishness by building up a code of friendship, or a pretence of friendship. This might be called the Great Compromise of Life. From this system of diplomacy and Machiavellian intrigue with our fellow man, we often lose our balance. We can lose our balance in either direction. We may be too rapacious and encounter serious rebuff. Or we may set for ourselves a Pollyannic code which we may come to believe, just to be more acceptable to our fellowman, and by so doing, for a while, place the attitude of our fellowman above ourselves and above common sense.

So we go back in meditation to such a time, for instance, one of extreme affectation, when we were a victim of our own Pollyanna. If we are female it may be that we felt at some time that Jake the Fake was the man of our life. We spent hours convincing ourselves that we were everything that was nice, avoided references to body functions, kept a very Christian conduct by saying nothing that might reek of an opinion about someone that might in some exaggerated interpretation be construed as gossip ... all in the hopes of making a good impression, and catching the eye of the man on the white horse, Jake the Fake. And so one day Jake sees you, and manages to get you alone for a bargaining session. And what do you do? Your body forgets about the mental pretence, and you blush, and you become so aroused that you have to pretend some more, this time with hurriedly summoned anger, to convince Jake that you are not the fake. But Jake is a wise man, and he says, "Get lost." The incident is traumatic, and remains traumatic until you review the whole thing dispassionately. Then you find that the gods were not against you, nor was the devil jumping about inside your body. You may, upon retrospection, come to the conclusion that Jake was really a fake, and not the knight on the white horse.

Now this may sound like an absurd little story, but how many of you know spinsters who have advanced into old age without ever dispelling the conceit that they could remake the world, by simply holding a certain attitude until the world came around to their way of thinking? And how many of us know handsome bachelors of sixty, who never realized that the most valuable human relationship was forever beyond their reach because they played the game of Jake the Fake?

Is such seemingly petty realization important to the spiritual development of man? If you do not think so, look at the incurable spinster and roue, and make some notes on the extent of their philosophic or religious unfoldment.

What are some of the things which we should look for while meditating? Are you older than twenty-one and still hating one of your parents? If so, go back into your youth and look for reasons. Then imagine what you will be doing at the future age, which will coincide with the present age of your parent.

If you are a victim of a warped libido, it is likewise good to go back into childhood. If you do not feel that you fit in among groups with which you would like to associate, the roots for such depression lie somewhere in childhood or youth.

Before we get too far along, let me remind you that the purpose of this self-introspection is not aimed at helping us to get along, or to be more compatible with Jake the Fake. If, as we progress, we find that there is therapeutic value to the meditation, then that is good. But that is not the objective. The objective is simply to know the self better.

When we seem to have exhausted childhood and adolescent memories of an irritating nature, and after we have exhausted even more recent traumatic memories, we almost come to a dead end in meditation. We can find material for further examination by reading from psychological texts, and by discussing ourselves with others with a view to amateurish analysis. Remarks and criticism from such encounters may provide us with a new evaluation of the self.

At the same time that we examine ourselves psychologically, we should examine ourselves directly. There are important questions, of which we should always be aware. We should now look at thought itself, and look for the relationship between awareness and thought.

Unless we examine the thought process simultaneously with intense psychological analysis, there is a chance that we may be sidetracked for long periods of time, meaning years, in either the foetal pleasantness of reliving the past, or in an endless depression at seeing the apparent hopelessness of the monumental task of fighting all the way back from cemented character facets. Watching the thought processes will stimulate us to purify and clarify them. And analysis will, with the increased clarity, enable us to see the anatomy of thought more clearly.

The secret to remember here, is the avoidance of strong identification with past traumas—as observed in meditation—to such an extent that we relive them. As has been said before, we must observe our life-strand as though we are watching a roll of film. We must become detached from the emotional part of memory, and should not allow ourselves to dichotomize ourselves to the extent that we reduce the observer (ourself) to the point of being a living actor in an old re-run.

There is a story of a little old lady who repeatedly confessed the same sin of moral nature to the priest for over twenty years because she enjoyed the process of reliving the crime, and even found satisfaction in being punished for it with repeated penances. On the other side, we have accounts of people who were so shocked at looking backward over their past that they decided to commit suicide with full deference for conventionally misguided moral values. If you asked such a person for his opinion of people addicted to Pollyannic pretenses, he might ridicule such pretenses. But he will nevertheless judge himself, and condemn himself by some set of rules, and the best description of the type of rules he uses, would be that they were Pollyannic.

Observation of the Thought Processes

I used to hear a question asked when I was in college, and although it was somewhat elementary and trivial—it stuck in my mind: "Do you think, or do you think that you think?" Of course an alert mind might readily pick up the apparent nonsense of the question that challenges a person’s thinking processes, by hinting that they only think it is—their thinking. (Arguing by attempting to prove non-thought with thinking!) However, more can be said about that question. It implies something else also. It implies that something or somebody else might be causing you to think, and are perhaps actually projecting thoughts into your awareness.

To view this possibility, and to substantiate that claim, we need only observe the argument that is going on within us nearly all the time. This argument is carried on by man’s different voices.

Now these voices are not necessarily entities, invading us from outside. They can be the voices of our different egos, or appetites. Or they may emanate from some genetic survival urge, or some genetic urge awakened by a genetic memory, or to borrow a page from Jung—from our racial memory.

These latter urges (implants) are not as common as the voices of the appetites which are often opposed to the survival urge. The appetites would have us indulge because of a pleasure-incentive; and indulgence, if carried too far can jeopardize the life or health of the person. The survival urge may manifest itself almost as artfully as the voices of the pleasure drives. The survival urge will seek out and endorse a moral code, or a spiritual code, in order to find words for the mind, as some sort of bulwark against debilitating sensuality.

In view of the nature of these diverse urges (in that they are mostly implants) we can see that the whole process of thought may well be rooted in mechanicalness. So that maybe we do not own our thinking processes as much as we thought we did.

This whole interplay of the various voices of man is ample material for this second level of meditation. We can take a simple function that is related to the appetites and watch the argument that results when that function begins. Sex is the easiest to give as an example because it is more relentless than some of the other appetites, and because the effects of sexual excesses are visible and easier to recognize, than the excesses of food desires, for instance. Often, the excessive food-appetite results from the imbalance of glands not related to digestion, and excessive sexual activity triggers such an imbalance, to cite one case. To be specific, any sexual activity stimulates the appetite for food. And some cases of hypothyroidism are known to appear in the early years of puberty, and are marked by an increase in weight and appetite.

So that we see a subtle relationship between glands and thought, and we can see that the whole delicate balance that should exist among the glands, is easily upset by any strong bid by one, unilateral voice or urge. In our youth, we are like balloons growing under increasing pressure. And usually we make the mistake of thinking that we can stimulate any appetite with impunity, and not have it affect our thinking processes, and thus affect our ulterior self. Such stimulation causes bulges in first one part of the balloon and then another. And man generally tries external remedies, if he tries any, and this seizing first one bulge and then another, solves nothing.

Once sex fixes itself in the mind, everything else goes out the window. History is full of Romeos and Juliets who gave their lives for sex, of Jezebels, Davids and Gideons, who have wrecked kingdoms, traded their honor and ethics, and even lost their heads for a moment of sex. Ministers and priests have given sex priority over their hope for immortality in some cases. And thousands of rapists have given their lives for a few minutes of self-assertion and self-delusion.

And there is no doubt that all of these people would admit, after the deed was done, that it was hardly worth the bother. I cite these extreme cases because it is easier to see in them, the fallacy of the supposition or momentary conviction of the indulger, that he or she is doing something which they really want to do. It may even be doubted that they (by "they” meaning their ulterior, arbiter-self) were really doing it at all, but were caused to do it by agencies or factors disguised as their real self.

Meditation will provide material for meditation, if we just observe the observer. Until we have conditioned the body for quiet sitting, we will get irritated by many of these voices or egos. We will get hungry, or thirsty. We will get tired, even though we are doing absolutely nothing with the body except holding it in the most comfortable position. And the mind will drift toward sexual reverie. For this reason, I am somewhat skeptical about the many prescribed methods of Kundalini-visualization, and about the meditation by nuns upon a naked man nailed to a cross.

Meditation upon sex is like lighting a match to see how much blasting powder is in the keg. You have to look into that keg without lighting a match. And when you do, you will see that you have been a robot, and that you have been doing things which were not your ultimate choice of behavior.

I realize when I refer to sex-action as being peculiar to robots, that I am not going along with modern psychology, which I might label veterinarian-psychology, or the system of producing more animal-like bodies, and more tractable animal bodies. I also advised reading such textbooks in order to provoke thought for meditational work. Anything is better than nothing, and if the reader of modern psychological texts finds himself believing them, and not seeing through them as he reads them, then he may identify with their system and become convinced that being a robot is the only thing to do.

The reason for advising the reading of some of these texts, and from volumes of case histories such as those written by Freud and Krafft-Ebing, lies in the hope that such reading will show us the flagrant examples which even hog-pen psychology and conventionality reject, and yet these urges lie dormant or threatening to some degree in all of us. Likewise, there are certain robot-predispositions that are named in all psychological texts, such as satyriasis, nymphomania, paranoia, schizophrenia, oedipus and electra complexes, and many more that must be encountered to be understood, even though the best understanding of these terms may not be the same as that which some psychologists of behavior would impose upon us.

In view of this difficulty, I advise that The Albigen Papers be read before this is read. I do not ask the reader to accept everything or anything in the first four papers, but I maintain that they will provoke thought, give us a new insight into ourselves by observing absurdities in human behavior and thinking, and, what is most important, give us a sense of caution when later we get into utilitarian types of psychology.

To get back to the analyzation of voices or appetites, let us take some sort of incident to show their mechanicalness. And once we are completely aware of our mechanicalness, then we have a chance to alter it. In fact the recognition of mechanicalness generally reduces its power.

We begin with the obvious, a sexual experience, which upon some occasion may have been carried to excess. I do not think that any of us pretend that sex is a candy-gift from the divine bounty, even though we may believe that it is some sort of candy-gift from the bounty of nature. If the act is carried to excess, then physical weakness and lassitude will result. Some sex may be stimulating when taken in moderation, but nature will continue to irritate even the person who acts in moderation, especially if the act does not produce offspring.

So that too little sex is irritating, and too much sex is irritating. Are we irritating ourselves? It is good to look at this. We are somehow channeled between two irritations—inexorably. We go on to the irritation from sexual excess. This irritation comes from another voice, the survival urge, speaking through the stomach perhaps. We get hungry or we want to retire and recollect our thoughts.

We may momentarily have the freedom from lust, a respite occasionally in which we see the absurdity of the frenzy of a few minutes past. I call this The Five Minutes of Sanity. This is the time when we should not run and hide, or eat, but sit and think. For some lovers these are the moments of genuine friendship without passion, and in these moments for them, they experience a feeling of selfless love, and a feeling of joint insignificance, of themselves with their mate, in regard to the overwhelming might of nature, and the overwhelming structure of the universe of which they are only two passive particles.

If this is the case, then, as has been mentioned before, we must begin to act out the discovery—to do something about it in other words. We may act in the wrong direction, but some or any action is better than just lying in the dichotomized channel of experience, always floundering between ecstasy and pain, between pleasure and the labor-payment, between pleasure and the activation of somatic genes that trend toward termination, of the vehicle.

Under the beautiful lawn are millions of bodies who cavorted thereon.

And how can we act? We can decide that the pleasure is worth the pain and become hedonists. We can try to live in moderation, by detaching ourselves from the destructive extremes, but at the same time indulging in sex to the point that nature is not denied, thus finding peace of mind and a period of grace in which to study.

But remember, peace of mind is a gift of nature, not of the Absolute. You have peace of mind when you are causing no ripples in nature. Satori only comes with friction and irritation.

So the other thing that we can do is to take action which may lead us possibly, but not deliberately toward irritation, life and discovery. This path inhibits sex, not for the sake of holiness, but to isolate the thinker from all outside influences. This path does not inhibit sex totally, but until certain objectives are reached, such as the development of maturity and intuition. After that we may indulge in sex, but only with detachment, for the health of body and mind, or for procreation. This life is detailed in another paper.

When the work begins in relation to the inhibition of libido, we will have plenty of material for meditation, and for the observation of the war of the voices. Because when we desire to inhibit sex, the underlying reason is taken under advice from the voice of the survival urge ... this time the urge to search for essence-survival which is just another survival-possibility.

Now there are some types of action which might seem reasonable, but which are not conducive to ultimate or Cosmic Consciousness. It might seem sensible for us to reject that survival-urge as a discovered ego. It is true that it is an ego, but these egos must be released in the proper sequence or else debauchery and self-destruction may result. The last ego to be removed will be the survival-urge. As we enter Satori, we give up even the hope of eternal, or even any form of, postmortem existence—but we really do not give it up, nor should we try to give it up. It will be taken from us.

Another ego that should not be removed in the beginning is the desire to be whole, which might be a form of narcissism. Even though this is interpreted as pride, unless it is retained until the point of maturity and intuition is reached, most of the railroad tracks for our reversed vector will be removed. This cannot be stressed too strongly. The desire to be whole will protect us from entities until we are stronger than the entities. The desire to be whole will keep the turbulence from meditation, because the mind will not be deliberately dwelling on its own dissipation.

The survival-urge should be observed in meditation however. And in its lesser form which is manifested in hunger, it may be inhibited, and should be inhibited (not eliminated) when hunger combines with the pleasure-urge and eating and drinking for pleasure takes over.

The people who complain about not having material for meditation are those who have the most.

Most people have become so imbued with behavioristic psychology that they imagine that Nature blesses everything that the modern herd-psychologist approves, or at least condones.

People lament about internal turmoil but blandly overlook the traumatic incidents in their past which were violations against Nature, and for which Nature will harass them until they at least behave like moral animals. And nearly all the offenders against Nature are those who hypocritically sing the praises of Nature, calling themselves Nature’s children.

I find too many people trying to go within, that are really only trying to pretend peace of mind, to distract their minds from their unnatural and hence turbulent, haunting thoughts.

We find them waiting for dripping nectar, listening for sounds, or gazing at some spot between their eyes—or chanting some mantra, all the while wondering why their whole being is still in turmoil.

Meditation on this turmoil should lead us to the intuitional realization that Nature may not encourage spirituality, but it will tolerate it. On the other hand, Nature will oppose and confront the mind that plays without paying.

Such a mind may continue to meditate only if it acts—upon recognition of the domain of Nature. In acting it must alter its course and see that the body habits are altered. The mandates of neither Congress nor the Supreme Court have any influence in the court of Nature.

Certain sexual acts produce definite psychic reactions. Unfortunately most everyone fails to be aware that such reactions exist. Those who have never committed the unnatural act are not visited, and they see no reason to believe that anyone is visited. Those who have committed the act are not going to admit anything if they can help it, and most of them defend all unnaturalness—hoping to bury their offense in the statistical corruption of other thousands, pointing to the percentages of sex-deviation discovered by Kinsey. This attitude would measure divine attitude by human incidence, and hope that a trend toward a universal practice would vindicate their diversion.

It does not matter if ninety per cent of all dogs have fleas or ticks—this should not legislate that fleas and ticks are either normal, natural, or divinely programmed for dogs to have.

If you want to make progress in spiritual meditation, you will find these psychic ticks and energy-sapping parasites to be an irritant—an irritant that we do not need, an irritant that is not removed by just staring at it eyeball to eyeball. In other words it is not neutralized by just admitting it. It may become more easy to live with it, by the admission, that is all.

Let us not rationalize here by commenting that all moral evaluations are the coloration of human repression upon humanity, or that there is no right or left in the Absolute. Most human repression in moral codes is a result of humanity’s awareness of the benefits of not creating cross-currents to Nature, and of the human observation that animals have more restricted sexual behavior than humans, and they are programmed by Nature. As for Absolute values, they cannot be understood or applied until the Absolute state has been reached. It is only sophistry to try to apply them before.

About removing psychic ticks ... more must be said elsewhere. If there is any doubt about this information that some erotic sex acts bring entities into our consciousness, we need only look into the history of shamanism.

Experimentation with exotic forms of sex is similar to experimentation with addictive drugs. The evaluator is affected because the evaluator before taking the drug is not the same evaluator who has been changed by the drug. So that to properly evaluate a drug experience we must have a third observer (process observer) watching the experimenter’s two or more states of mind, and noting that the changed experimenter sometimes acquits and condones the drug. The experimenter will condone the drug (or the exotic sex experience) with an altered state of mind, and he will shut the door even on his previous appreciation of a desired state of being, and even upon peace of mind. The man who places the cup to the lip is not the same man who sets down the cup.

Going Within

The ultimate aim of meditation is to go within. Going within means to find Reality by finding the Real part of ourselves. It does not mean merely the playing around inside the head with random observations which we have discussed as being important to understanding the natural mechanism of man’s mind.

Also we come to the realization that each individual’s going within is unique to that person. However there are procedures and general hints that will help everyone. We take this information from other people who have gone inside.

The big trouble in all forms of meditation is the inability to hold the mind on a given project long enough to achieve results. If we are going to plan a spiritual path with any degree of comprehensive understanding of our own weaknesses, with the aim of engineering compensation for or circumvention of those weaknesses, then we must have that plan laid down before we begin to meditate.

Since we are inclined to forget, we must provide ourselves while awake, with reminders to keep us awake, and to keep us aware of that which we have to do. We have read in the Paper on Obstacles,* about some of the human weaknesses. They include fear, fatigue, the appetites, pleasure-inclination, and laziness. Laziness may prompt rationalization, procrastination and forgetting.

* See The Albigen Papers, the Fifth Paper.

In order to prevent forgetting it is advisable to have something daily before our view. We should have a room into which we can go undisturbed. If possible, the room should contain little or nothing in the line of furniture that will distract the mind. The walls should be bare, except for things which we might attach to the wall as reminders. If you travel for a living and cannot meditate in the same place, then you can carry a small notebook with these reminders.

One of these reminders might be the picture of a triangle. Another, the picture of a ladder. Another might be a zero placed before a vector sign pointing away from the zero. The triangle will remind us of the threefold path. And we can ask ourselves occasionally for a sort of progress report on how we are functioning and accomplishing, on each of the three departments of effort.

Principally, are we trying to live the Truth, to see the truth as opposed to human positivism, and to become the Truth? Secondly, are we following a Way, a mental discipline of some sort besides just reading and studying all that we can on the "data to date” or relative material? And thirdly, are we promoting parallel effort to work with others, or to find others with whom we can join efforts?

These symbols will take us back to the significance of information listed in The Albigen Papers, Five through Eight.

When we begin to meditate in the attempt to go within we should simply observe ourself. We cannot really do it simply. It is a very profound task or attempt. For instance if we are sitting in meditation and we observe ourselves sitting in meditation, we are not really observing ourselves, but are rather observing a conjured visualization of what we would like to appear, to a visitor, to the scene.

Not being aware of this visualization, we begin to dichotomize ourself. We may think that we are watching ourself. Then we may think that we are watching that whole process, that of watching ourself watching ourself. Then we think that we are watching ourself, watching ourself watching the process. And so ad infinitum.

If we are truly observing, we will see that we are dichotomizing ourself. And then we will see that the process of dichotomizing ourself is not real, that it is all a visualization. And we do not wish to become the victim of visualization. However, once we have run the gamut of this multiple splitting, we will suddenly become aware ... we will become aware of awareness. We will then have placed our finger on consciousness, and distinguished it from sensation and perception.

Observing ourselves should not be a full identification with emotion-memories. Observation of ourself should not be the picturing of our body in action, as much as the observation of the reasons for acting, the thoughts that generated the action, and the anatomy of the thoughts.

Of course we cannot escape seeing pictures of our body in our life-strand re-run. However if we are aware at all times that we are looking for clues in that observation process, then we will try to remember the thoughts and the motivation, noting the tremendous role that emotions play in past actions, but all the while not allowing ourselves to become emotional again over the re-run.

Thus we have a paradoxical, dichotomy-instruction: Do not dichotomize by watching yourself watching yourself—this is visualization. But, detach yourself—your emotional self—while watching the re-run. Watch yourself clinically, not with personal involvement. This dichotomy is only to the re-run and is not really a dichotomy, but the looking at memories while unaffected by egos or emotions that are not necessarily informative.

Present-time self-observation should be the observation of thought processes, not any present-time visualization of recent scenes involving our body.

We must view perception as both environmental observation, and a projection from our own mind that has been adjusted by that mind.

The mere fact that we can be aware of perception, means that perception is not us. And yet, there is some of that which we perceive that is really projected from us, in an adjusting mind-process. This latter "us” is not the same self that is aware of perception. This latter "us” or projector, is really a qualifying perception-apparatus. I am reminded of some very obvious perception-pictures on the retina, and the real colors in white that are not physically observed, sounds that are not heard, imperfect feeling, as well as the possibly more subtle adjustments of our whole view of the physical, outside world which comes to us with certain faith or preconception which may not be True, or justified in the ultimate realization of things.

Our first taste of Maya or illusion comes to us with the realization that we are projecting some, at least, of this picture-show of life. With it also come the idea that somehow we are all in agreement on this projection, except for isolated cases, or in particular areas of thinking that have an individually intrinsic understanding. This means that from birth, we are mentally adjusting and projecting in harmony with other beings’ minds, and with such harmony that we must conclude that there is a bond between the minds of all animal life (at least), so that the mind which projects is universal, and not the sole property of our individual skull.

To isolate this projection-process for thinking purposes, and to distinguish it from the percepts of self-observation which may be incidents of process-observation, let us use the symbol AMPP, or Adjustment of Mind-Projected Perceptions. All physical experience is AMPP; i.e., sensory experience. All visualization is AMPP. Direct Experience, or DE, leads to true experience, or to Mind, capital M.

So that when we speak of "us” with a small u, or the self, we mean the association of imperfect sensory perception and recordings, as well as the voices, egos or appetites, all of which color the picture (physical) that is witnessed by the mind. This "us” or self might be called personality. And when we speak of Us, capital U, we speak of the final observer, or essence, or final awareness.

So that when we speak of the mind, let us distinguish between the mind of adjustment and the Mind of awareness. The former is manifesting or manifested mind (since the projection is previously adjusted even before the person is born), and the latter is unmanifested, unparticularized, mind-stuff.

Thus we have the mind (small m) performing two functions. One is AMPP and the other is the intellectual reaction to AMPP. So that we are always projecting—which is automatic—and we are always reacting to the projection of our own making, making endless, feverish analyses without really being aware of our own qualifying, catalytic action upon the environmental picture. So that AMPP is automatic, and unconscious. The reaction is generally automatic also, and might be described as being semi-conscious and semi-automatic. It is only semi-conscious when it reacts in self-observation, or in the analysis of the thought processes.

Mind (capital M) is aware of the whole above tail-chasing.

Many have heard of the Manifested Mind and the Unmanifested Mind before, in other papers, and perhaps saw little meaning in the words. The significance is felt only when you observe the source of thought, life and light.

Let me mention here briefly that there is a source, even ulterior to the Unmanifested Mind. From this source emanates Life or Light. Our life finds its fountainhead long before our birth or the birth of our ancestors. Our very essence is projected from this Absolute. Our Manifested and Unmanifested Minds are incidental to that Projection.

When we are fully aware of the processes of the Manifested Mind, it becomes apparent that even concepts, or explanations, such as is this entire work, are conditional and relative. So that in looking at it from the viewpoint of the Unmanifested Mind, it does not matter if you believe all this or not ... it matters only that you look inside. Find out for yourself, who your Ultimate Observer is.

The Genesis of Thought

What is thought? Thought is a more subtle thing than is vaguely hinted by the dictionary. Thought is a personal reaction which is not a muscular reflex. A thought is the result of a percept affecting one or more memories. Thought is dynamic or vital in proportion to the number of memories that have been affected by the pertinent percept.

When a bee walks across a child’s arm for the first time, there may not be much thought involved. The buzzing noise which the bee makes may even be musical and the bee’s body may seem beautiful to the child. However when the child is stung once, the next bee will produce more dynamic thoughts, so much so that the buzzing of a similar insect will galvanize the child into dynamic attention.

In observing the thought-processes we should remember that anything observable apparently has objective form, and a meaning relative to the meaning of other objects and definition associated with its definition. [?] All things in objective consciousness (meaning things observable) have possibly real existence. Likewise all things which are relative are subject to the possibility of non-existence. Even stars explode and cease to be as stars. The acceptance of the nature of life automatically involves the necessary acceptance of lifelessness.

A realization of thought or thought-processes objectively, or definitively, means that we automatically must conceive of a state of no-thought. A state of mind, if definable, must automatically involve a state of no-mind.

We come now to a point in Zen that may be more easily understood. Zen speaks of a state of no-mind, and we generally accept it as so much mystery, or double-talk and give it no further study. However by that word "no-mind” is not meant non-existence, but the undefined mind, the undefinable mind, the unparticularized mind, the mind which does not think ... but from which very-aware platform may emanate the mind-stuff that creates and is witnessed by that which it creates. Yet it is from that very "aware” platform (no-mind) that we may become one with the Unmanifested Mind, which in turn emanates the mind-stuff (Manifested Mind) etc.

The Unmanifested Mind cannot be perceived, even intellectually. The last paragraph cannot be understood in the light of common sense because of that. Common sense can tell us that a state of no-mind might exist, if a state of mind exists, but we cannot conceive no-mind any further than that. Only the Ultimate awareness can touch it. When we are ultimately aware, we can enter the Ultimate Mind, or Unmanifested Mind. We cannot learn about it, we can only become it, or merge our awareness with it.

Christ, even before the "Black Hole” theory existed, made the remark that heaven and earth would pass away, but that his essence would not. Mankind had no interpretation for those words, except to presume that Christ was waxing poetic.

Although it is not true that a baby only begins to think at birth, we must assume that there is a time relative to birth, at which a baby has his first thought-reaction. We take the time before that, when there is life, and ability to be affected by environment. Theoretically, before an infant can think, he must be affected—he must have something coming in to think about. So that the genesis of thought begins with a percept. This thought-process now under consideration has a distinct category: it is Somatically Induced Thought. There is another perception and reaction system that has to do with perceptions not coming to us through our normal senses, or possible kinetic sources. We will talk about it later.

The first percept records. There is no reaction, because there is no memory previous to compare or to coordinate with this singular percept.

Reaction is only possible with the second percept, and the ensuing percepts which strike the impression made by primal percept or percepts. So that at first, in an infant, the amount of thinking is limited. A memory is not a quality of mind, unless we want to name as a faculty, the quality of the mind to be impressed by percepts. Memory is impressionability. It does not matter at this point whether memory is physical or the quality of some elusive ectoplasm. It is witnessable, and that is what is important. It is manifestly physical, since experiments have shown that memories are carried in flesh, as in the transfer or memories from dying or dead planaria to living planaria through ingestion. Recent evaluations of the DNA molecule may also substantiate the theory of physical memory.

The fact that memory is somatic leads us to a better understanding of the somatic, or relative mind (relative mind with a small m). This has also led many psychologists abruptly into the conviction that the body-mind was all that existed.

But who or what is watching this process? The mystic looks at it, and realizes that there is an ulterior observer. He realizes it by watching the process. He notices that he perceives, and remembers only that which he perceives, so that memory is caused by the percepts. Some faculty is aware of both perception and memory, and the inevitable reaction. We are not our thoughts, since being aware of thinking places it in a phenomenal category, that is witnessable.

Next, in the mental process, we notice that we react to our own reactions. We learn not to do anything sudden when the bee approaches, and we inhibit the urge to swat it with the bare hand. We learn to doubt the value of spontaneous reaction, and we hesitate while evaluating. If we hesitate too long, and receive injury from the delay, we learn to evaluate with urgency. This evaluation becomes increasingly complex, but it is never anything more complex than reaction. It is not a divine candle in the head, which we might label either discrimination or intelligence. And when we notice that we are reacting upon evaluation, we identify that process with ourself and call it Will. So that Will is nothing more than the process of directed, or urgent reaction.

Now we can go on to Imagination. We notice that we are seemingly able to direct our reactions, and we notice that we can evaluate at length, when we are least challenged by irritations from the immediate environment. So when we find ourselves in a safe environment, we begin to react, or to make decisions about prolonging that state of non-irritation, which may at the same time be a state free from fear, hunger, and the elements. The reaction is to build a hut, or a house, or to make a cave secure. The cave or hut gives us more time to plan for greater security. And this planning is automatic, once the mind is freed from anxiety. The individual can shut off most incoming percepts and allow the reaction of one dynamic percept to trigger chains of memories, and to observe new combinations of old memories. The entire structure of civilization emerged in this fashion, being nothing more than old memories in newer and more complex form. So that Imagination, the creator-matrix, is nothing more that the reaction (automatic) of memories upon memories.

We go on to gestalts. Gestalts are pattern-reactions. These are simply more complex methods of reaction. In driving a car, we have many factors which have to be acted upon, with urgency. Yet in each of these reactions there has been previous, almost step by step reaction, and repetition of reaction in each possible variation—until we are able to instantly recognize a variable pattern and instantly respond. A truck is coming at us from one direction, we are driving a car with a worn clutch that will not release the gears, the gas pedal is stuck at full-throttle, and we cannot reach the key and pull on an emergency brake at the same time. We have several alternatives, or we may only have one. Perhaps this is the first time this has happened, but we have mentally reacted to isolated cases before where only the brakes went bad, or only the clutch refused to disengage, or where both brakes and clutch went out on an open road without hazard. Now we may wheel our car toward the curb at the same time that our legs are pumping on the brake and clutch, and while trying to slow the car down with the emergency brake. At that instant a child steps off the curb, and we may wheel the car back into the path of the truck, taking the chance of killing yourself rather than a car filled with people. All of this time many muscles, and even complicated perception apparatus is functioning at the same time. Because there is no more time than a few seconds spent, it seems unlikely that there existed a particularized separate reaction to each percept. There is however. There is a reaction to a pattern of percepts, by virtue of gradually increasing response to parts of the pattern, and to contemplation beforehand of variations of the pattern that might follow. All of this comes about when we learn to drive. Learning to drive is nothing more than learning to react to given patterns of conceivable possibility. We do not react to accidents that have no relation to any previous experiences—we generally become paralyzed. Thus this paralysis might occur if we drove our car into a crevice one thousand feet deep.

Self-consciousness can only occur when we are able to perceive individualized memory. Meaning that each individual has a private memory. It begins with the awareness of memory, and becomes more dynamic with the perception of the memories. We cannot perceive a percept except in some intellectual deduction. We cannot perceive (or observe) our reacting. We can be aware of the process of reaction by observing the results of reaction.

For instance when we observe memories of candy, a vacation trip, and a girlfriend, we may view the possibility of sending her a box of candy, or we may ask her to prepare for a honeymoon. This all may bring back memories of previous romances, and we may say to ourselves, "This is the same set of circumstances which led to trouble once before.” This latter reaction is the secondary reaction. And again we may call up other memories, paralleling marriage with a carefully planned business deal, and decide that we can get married after all, if we just detach ourselves from the pleasurable promptings and work it out with cold analysis. This would be a third reaction, or a reaction to a previous pattern of reaction. And we like to call this Reason. However it is all automatic if we observe it closely enough.

And of course what we are trying to do here is to find an escape from automatic existence if such is possible. Conditioning is still the grand demon of that religion called behavioristic psychology.

Let us go back now to the basic elements in thinking, the percept and the reaction. We find that for the percept and reaction to work, there must be energy involved. Thinking, in plain words is tiresome. However this is the thinking that is sensory in nature, somatic thinking. Direct thinking does not have the same energy-demand. In fact much direct experience comes to us when the conscious mind is almost completely neutralized by fatigue, anaesthetic or the self-imposed inactivity of deep meditation. Even unconscious people have awakened from a coma, or from sleep with a distinct memory of a meaningful experience. However, we note that these memories that are not impressed on us with the application of energy, are easily dissipated, and unless we quickly transfer them to a conscious memory pattern, or have them transferred by shock or terror as in a nightmare—they vanish from our recollection.

This does not apply only to dreams, but to the many ESP experiences as well. This lack of need for heavy energy in direct perceptions and thoughts, brings us to view with practicality the possibility that death and its lack of physical energy, may well be a state in which direct becoming, or direct awareness is possible. Satori, or the experience of dying while living, reinforces this hint, because it is the result of the ability to become, being applied to the direction of awareness at death. Or in other words, we do not apply somatic thinking to the problem, but learn the trick of applying direct thinking to the problem of death.

It would seem therefore, that a person who did not intellectualize his thinking process, but learned to use direct thinking would be the first to arrive at the advanced state of Satori. We get a picture of an uneducated man, simply training his sensitivities to be able to directly experience phenomena, and by so doing, out-distancing the complex scientific mind that is wondering about the fruits of his complex pattern thinking. The paradoxical fact is that it takes an abundance of somatic thinking, to arrive at the understanding that somatic thinking is relative, that it is somatic in origin, and will never bring anything but mundane results unless we realize that it is relative and illusory.

It takes an abundance of somatic thinking, and an accumulation of an abundance of energy to propel us backward over the reverse vector. All observation of the observation processes may be frustrated. Like the Zen koan, all of our attention to somatic thinking may in the end seem like nonsense, but we have to go through it. The more intense this application of energy is to the observation of thinking processes, the more we will come back to the true relation (or apparent non-relation) of the whole thought processes to the central awareness.

This awareness might be called attention in the ultimate degree. And with this attention we may discover that the whole world is projected through our mind, and with endless energy that lays even behind that mind. The knowledge that our incorrect, or imperfect somatic mind is giving us an incorrect worldview, helps us to realize that all our experiences are mental, not physical, and it also helps us to realize that if there is an incorrect projection, then it is very possible that there is a correct projection. However such a correct projection is, or would be, still a projection, and would not be Reality. It would be a projection, however of a Real Manifesting Mind.

This equation of applied energy producing an understanding of a state of no-energy, is similar to a fish swimming upstream. We must gather up such a ball of energy that it matches the force of the production of illusory projection. We swim upstream through the swift places until we find an immense pool that is tranquil. And when we reach that, all of our balled up energy breaks forth and even the somatic emotions release their energy when it is apparent that all effort and energy are no longer needed. Such is Satori.

Summary Notes

Levels of Meditation

1. Remembering incidents of traumatic or reactive nature.

2. Finding the final self among the many selves of voices.

3. Analyzation of thought-processes.

4. Going within. Employ whatever necessary.

5. Transmission.

Confrontation is not meditation. It is a technique used to provoke meditation, to get the mind off dead center.

Preparation for Meditation

1. Find a place that will allow you to be quiet.

2. Reduce body-turbulence.

3. Do not fight Nature, but take a holiday from the whole Nature-game.

4. Provide synthetic irritation to keep the mind working.

5. Be aware of all obstacles, and Laws.