Quotes and notes from meetings with Richard Rose – 1991-1996
3/2 – 3/4/91 – Trip to see Mr. Rose at the farm in WV. Informal rapport session (I know that he knows).
6/24/01 – Went to the Farm this past weekend. The message was between- ness. There is nothing that one can do. One can only watch and let things happen. Mr. Rose said my problem was I was still looking for a logical solution. There is none. He said, however, “You can also feel. Maybe you’ll use both. I don’t know.” I don’t know what that last sentence means. He said he advises no regular practices – no system. Each of us should know what he needs to work on. He said no to vegetarianism and the ascetic diet. Eat what is available and appropriate. “In a true rapport, you will know what the others are thinking.” “Put a thought in your head, hold it there, then forget it.” He said something about how you reach a point where you don’t know what else to do, but you have to keep on looking.
7/8/91 – Went to the TAT meeting. A bunch of us were sitting at a round table in the side room discussing dreams. I was feeling good that some philosophical discussion was finally started. Mr. Rose looked in and said, “Ah, the warriors gathered in the cave.”
Mr. Rose told me that everyone has a different obstacle and unless they opened up to him, he couldn’t help. Guys spent years on the farm and he never knew why they were there. He also said I had to find a place where I could think and I had to make a decision. He said I must have a plan for whatever action I take.
9/2/91 – Ten of us from Raleigh went to the TAT meeting. Mr. Rose said an autistic child is one who is honest.
12/2/91 – Spent Wednesday through Sunday at the Farm. Mr. Rose said we had to get a different point of view. It was not possible to view the earth while standing on it. He also told us to avoid those things which hypnotized us. He said none of us had read enough; sometimes things come to you when you read.
1/1/92 – Rose said you must get angry. He also said you must find what will settle your system. Each of us has something which is bugging us.
1/3/92 – Rose said we weren’t asking the right questions. He said none of us had a blueprint for our fight. We were still concerned with what we might miss if we chose a spiritual path. We had no conception of what was at stake and what there was to gain from seeking.
In regards to rapport, Rose said rapport can be built. We should only let one person in at a time. That way, after a couple of sittings, we’ll know if he is an energy drain. Lack of revelations is a sign you are not on the path, but revelations are not a sign you are on the path.
Rose said that because a person is low energy does not mean they are an energy drain. They may just have a slow metabolism.
He said that in his experience, “I knew that I was home.” In rapport, we can get a hint of this.
3/3/92 – Rose, “You don’t fight battles by worrying about what you may lose.” “You’ll never know if what you’re doing is right. You can only back away from untruth.”
Mr. Rose said that if we keep at this work long enough, we will become free. He also said that words can’t record what we get from these meetings. There is also a feeling or a state of mind which results.
6/7/92 – Mr. Rose came by the lodge yesterday and talked to Bill, Georg, Danny, and me. He said we shouldn’t work more than a half a day because this would stimulate the appetite and slow down thinking, and we should all learn hypnosis because it is a way to understand the mind. He said he would be available for advice, but other than that would let us do our own thing.
6/13/92 – Mr. Rose said we are looking for mechanisms to get what we want. We aren’t moving. The secret is to apply an intense amount of energy to a question, then forget about it. One must be focused.
6/18/92 – Mr. Rose said when you have to work with your mind, you’re losing bits of energy. His mind works by taking impressions of a person, then thinking over them.
6/26/92 – Mr. Rose said: You must have an iron will. You can’t get to know him in order to facilitate rapport. You must know yourself thereby increasing your stature. People of similar stature have a natural rapport. You must dope out for yourself ways and means of speeding the process of obtaining spiritual knowledge. Getting off by yourself and reading is very important.
6/27/92 – Mr. Rose said that thinking of nothing is slowly pulling away from all thoughts until none are left. This is not the same as his experience. He said Zen is a technique of harassing the mind, but one should harass their own mind.
6/30/92 – Rose said you just have to keep at it. A steady pressure is better than one muscular push.
7/13/92 – Rose said [the group] must be a group of independent seekers. No man should let another order him around. You must take inventory (mental) at least once a year; maybe every three months. He said we were at a threshold where we had to be able to focus in on something. When we start really focusing in, we’ll start asking the right questions.
7/16/92 – Rose said you pretty soon realize you’re a machine, then you want to know where the programming is coming from. You’ll get enlightened before you find this out.
8/2/92 – Rose said that in the past, if a guy wanted some answers, he would go out into the desert and fast until he got them.
1/5/93 – Rose said several times that whenever you set your mind to something, forces will arise to stop you. I asked about the energy I sometimes feel in meditation. He said you should look at it as a gift and not pursue it. It comes after a successful struggle.
4/1/03 – A profound lecture by Mr. Rose at Chapel Hill tonight. The key to magic is to remove the ego from what you do. Take the attitude of “let’s see what might happen” rather than “let’s make this happen.” Mr. Rose says don’t brag about what you do. Be grateful that it happened. He implied that you bump into things; you don’t make things happen. Mr. Rose said that in the old days, a master would send the pupil to the mountaintop and tell him to stay until he found the answer.
8/1/03 – Mr. Rose said not to seek out pressure. If you are seeking, then pressure will come to you. He said he listens to the tone of a person’s voice and not what they are saying. He said our job was to ask questions. Our group deteriorates into a clubhouse and we don’t ask enough questions. He said we must perfect ourselves, choose a direction, and become a vector in that direction.
8/11/93 – Asked Mr. Rose if I would ever feel I was doing everything I should. He said no, and that that had been the curse of his life.
9/13/93 – Talked with Mr. Rose today. He said that a discipline will pay off after time whether it be reading cards or being celibate. He downplayed the idea of a teacher and had no comment on transmission. He very grudgingly said it’s worthwhile sitting for rapport, but said it just happens. He seemed to agree that asking him questions was how to use his friendship, and that being friends is most important.
9/14/93 – Talked with Mr. Rose for four hours. He said after a year of celibacy you have the power. Just don’t let your ego get involved. If you want to try healing, take a what-the-heck attitude and just give it a try. He said women could not give energy to men and so couldn’t use their own energy in healing. He said you shouldn’t touch people.
He said that you have a vector built up, and if you relax then a lot of things will take care of themselves. He said he always just took the first job he could find. He said don’t procrastinate making decisions or else they’ll become bigger and bigger worries.
I asked why he opened the Farm up to people and he said so that one could have a place to be alone and think. He said the guys even needed to get away from each other because there was a tendency to sit around and bullshit.
10/6/03 – Talked about three hours with Mr. Rose. He said I should set a goal such as stop smoking and go for it. That way you set greater and greater goals and gain more control over oneself. He said “service and selflessness” is not a thing to strive for; that these traits would come to you if you were on the path.
He said he knew I would get complacent out here [on the Farm]; that I was living an idyllic life. He said I must keep my mind stimulated; books were one way.
10/15/93 – Rose keeps saying that a sign of progress is that you will gain power to cause things to happen – like healing. He said don’t go out and look for people to heal. When the opportunity presents itself, use it without fear of failure. Rose said reason and logic will not take one to the Absolute.
10/17/93 – Rose said the women in the group were more spiritual than the men because they could “pick up on it.” He said a woman could have a soul if she wanted to look for it.
10/21/93 – Rose said you can see the ego working. He said you must have faith in yourself, but also not let the ego get in the way.
10/24/93 – Mr. Rose said he had failed to inspire people. He again pointed out how few people ask him questions. He wants to operate by question and answer; not by preaching. Said 9 out of 10 group people are unwilling to change their lifestyle. Said knowledge and power are interlinked. The most interesting thing he said was about the Farm section near the boundary of B and C sections. He said he gets a nostalgic feeling out there; that there is more of the spirit of the group out there than there is down at the house. He said he has a couple of “false faces” – joking and bitching.
10/29/93 – Rose said, “A person shouldn’t get angry because that saps power. A person could break into my house and I would kill him, but not with anger.” Be determined without anger. He said it’s okay to work just enough to get by. Work is a trap. The country is ideal for a spiritual life. In the city, you’ll always have somebody knocking on your door wanting to go get a beer. He said physical habits start with mental habits.
When a person becomes celibate and gets his power, he should make up his mind to help others.
I said I didn’t have any more questions. He said, “Oh, yes you do, you just don’t know them yet.”
10/30/93 – Mr. Rose said daydreaming was a loss of energy.
11/25/93 – [regarding healing] Rose said you must care about the person and have confidence in, or indifference to, the results. If you get peace of mind then you’re free because your habits are no longer needed and fall away. At the same time, it takes trauma for realizations to occur.
12/1/93 – Talked to Mr. Rose. I asked why I didn’t pick up on things like others. He said he thought I was sensitive, but my sensitivity was in a locked box. He said I was reserved. He said that’s fine, you can just be that way, and let others do the talking. I said “don’t I have to change if I want what you have?” He said yes and that’s what you work on in meditation.
12/15/93 – Rose talked of the path of solitude. Each person must find their own way; do what they feel they should. Go to him when you have questions. He also said never plan on expanding the group. Growth should be automatic. He emphasized how you should tell him what troubles you’re having, how your experiments are working, because he might spot something you missed. Each person has a slightly different language.
1/11/94 – Alex and I went to see Rose. Lots of talk about why you have to “be single and expect to be for a long time.” “You can’t carry your girlfriend on your back to enlightenment.” I worried about chasing that feeling I get from Three Books of the Absolute. “It’s alright to chase it, just don’t be disappointed if you don’t find it.”
About depression: analyze it, it’s sending you a message. Analysis will ease it.
He said you get inclinations from your parents. Get away from these inclinations and you’ll “start to see down the road and know you’re digging for gold.”
I asked if I should be training so I could read five hours non-stop. He said no, when you need a break take a walk. When walking, your mind will think some more and get some oxygen to it.
1/23/94 – Rose said something is speaking to me when I have moments when I feel I could let go and die. He said analyze it. He said the pleasure of sitting in the woods was ok. I take it that any pleasure which becomes a habit is using you. He said a girlfriend or marriage was alright, but was a step towards the basement. He said exercise, but don’t strain yourself.
Rose said summon determination even by getting angry at yourself. Sooner or later, he said, you see life is a bunch of crap.
2/17/94 – I mentioned how a person once asked if they’d get enlightened if they went out to a cabin and said they’d stay until enlightened or dead. Rose told him yes. To this story, Rose told me, “Yes, but I wouldn’t recommend it. The determination is to be admired, but the attitude is wrong. You’re challenging whatever is up there. You’re saying ‘enlightenment or death,’ but that may be not following the natural course. If you get help it will be because you ask for it, not because you demand it.”
He said chief feature is chief weakness.
3/10/94 – Other things of interest which Rose said: “The more I talk, the less you listen.” “You are alone.” “Through consistent effort, you become.” He said he plays a very minor role in one’s becoming. That is your job. “You are the path; you are the way.”
3/12/94 – Rose said you can’t get straight answers from an enlightened person.
4/2/94 – Rose said he could transmit, but it would be his experience and not your own.
4/17/94 – Rose said he wanted to turn away from the meeting being a b.s. session and have a discussion. He said he didn’t have much time left and wanted to have some people speak up and say what they wanted. He’s looking for people interested in “the relationship between the mind and the eternal part that knows.”
He said people come to the Farm for three reasons: vacation, meditation, and spiritual insight.
4/29/94 – He said a person wouldn’t get a realization in a rapport, but would know the other people better and might get an idea of a direction that their self would need to take.
5/1/94 – He said when the mind is stilled you can pick up on something.
5/8/94 – Rose said that even though it might only be a minute quantity of energy lost, don’t let anyone touch you.
5/15/94 – Rose did say that a person should sit for rapport with themselves. This was different from meditation because the mind would eventually go blank in meditation and it’d turn into dreaming.
5/17/94 – Rose said that if you are determined, the group (rapport) can’t hold you back; they may only provide a small push, but they can’t stop you. He said the other day that you can hear rapport.
Reading is our counter-programming.
Rose said that you find a peace within you.
5/29/94 – Rose said that if a guy went into the desert and could focus, he might gain consciousness of life after death. He would be like a dead man talking to himself.
5/23/94 – Rose said there was a restlessness in the room as if people were trying to decide something; perhaps some are too carefree. It’s like a battery, he said, there might not be enough people. He put the nix on further rapport sittings.
8/6/94 – Rose: I am not a Zen master. I know the Zen techniques, but I don’t think they fit my personality. Don’t go looking for people to help. That’s ego. If someone standing in front of you needs help and you see that what you said helped them change, that’s great.
8/31/94 – I asked Mr. Rose about [the poem] “The Dawn Breaks.” “I like that,” he said, “even if no one else does. Sometimes I get in a mood of reality.” I asked about the Wilder play “Our Town,” specifically the graveyard scene. “I think that’s accurate,” he said, “they’re all sitting around real stiff in chairs. Silence, then someone brings something up which sparks a bit of association.”
9/4/94 – “Make yourself a vector in one direction.” “It’s what you read that’s important. Now, I don’t mean books. I mean phenomenon and what your mental state is when they happen.” Rose said, “I am absolutely convinced that those people who have consciousness after death spent the most time thinking about it while they were alive.”
9/5/94 – Rose said you had to be sympathetic toward a person to get rapport with them. If you get too sympathetic, then you lose energy.
9/10/94 – Rose said, “All of you are distracted.” He said analyzing thought processes was indeed part of exploring.
9/18/94 – Rose said [about X], “He never did develop his own philosophy. Some people are joiners. They want to be in a club or something.”
10/2/94 – Rose said, “If you speak the truth, maybe truth will come to you. Don’t amplify what you have done. Don’t try to please people by touching on their philosophy.”
Why people left the group: “Most people get sucked back into the mundane mind before any realizations happen to them.”
He said to avoid “bopping” around the country. “You should get a job around here and cement yourself in.”
To my question of him also knowing how to act and what to say: “The fact is, I often think I should have said this or emphasized that.”
“The closest that you get to god is that some changes occur within yourself and then you see the infinite possibilities.” He also said, “Some part of you knows who you are.”
He said a good place to begin is by writing down what you believe or what you think yourself capable of. He said it’s good to read, sit alone, think, and write.
“Intensity is what matters.”
10/20/94 – Rose on hypnosis: what matters is that the subject senses that you mean them no harm; that you want to help them, then they are willing to cooperate. He said if he was in a happy-go-lucky mood, feeling good about himself, he could heal anybody who walked through the door.
10/22/94 – Rose on lectures: I always go in with the attitude of not wanting a person to have to go through what I did [in my years of searching].
11/25/94 – Besides celibacy, how do I improve my changes of getting hunches? “Through applying enough energy to the problem.”
What does it mean to look between thoughts? “Things will come to you, which were not reached by thought.”
Could a man unravel his personality on his own or does he need others to point things out? “You can do it on your own.”
12/21/94 – Rose said, “Take it two by two; don’t plunge all in at once.” You’ll get confused if you plunge right in.
1/23/95 – Rose on lecturing: “make yourself common. Go in with your head empty. Go in as a seeker. If someone might help you by talking, listen to what they have to say.”
Rose said don’t brag about saving three cents.
1/28/95 – Asked Rose, “What should I be doing in the next year, if I could do anything I wanted?” “Whatever you want to do.”
He said that between-ness and “making a commitment and putting it out of your mind” were different. He said he doesn’t know how between-ness happens: “it’s like grace.” I asked if it were like no-mind in the Zen writings. “Possibly,” he said, “You don’t have any thoughts of yourself in your head.” I asked if he had to make an effort to keep his ego out of it. He said, “Oh yes, I turn away when those thoughts come up.”
1/29/95 – “Live your beliefs.”
“Your inner self knows [if this work agrees with you].”
2/8/95 – “A lot of people act like they want to be your friend, but they just want something from you. A real friend is rare.”
I asked, “What has to change for me to advance spiritually?” He said, “You don’t have to change.”
I countered, “But there’s things I want to change.” “Of course,” he said,”like with the guy calling you names. You’ll find new ways of communicating and certain things won’t matter.”
2/19/95 – Told Rose I wanted to be able to sit with nothing like the guys in the desert did, but found I could only do so for a short time. He said, basically I wasn’t fed up enough with the world. He said the guys in the desert already had some wisdom and wanted to get away from the world. He said there’s hurdles I have to cross like a runner does. Those hurdles may be celibacy, drinking, etc.
He said he never felt he had much ego, but was kind of shy. “Sooner or later you have to come out of that shell.”
In regards to healing: “you need to have compassion.”
2/20/95 – Rose said to choose a book that grabs you and take it into isolation. If you have three or four books it will confuse you.
3/9/95 – Rose said, “You can’t do this for yourself. You’re doing it to impress on people that there is a higher way of life.”
3/15/95 – He kept talking about healing. Finally, I asked what that had to do with spiritual realization. “Healing relates in no way to spiritual realization,” he said. “What caused enlightenment is the agony within the man.” “There’s no formula or rules which can be written out in a book.”
“I need more agony,” I said. He just laughed.
“Going into the desert, having few or no people to talk to, not eating, you know, is a way.”
I asked if my attitude toward celibacy should be to stay celibate until I have a realization. “Well, that’s the wrong attitude; don’t challenge,” he said.
“Is saying that I want to know an answer, the wrong attitude?” I asked. “A drowning man should scream for help,” was the reply.
Tonight, Rose was watching “Married with Children” on tv. “I can’t take much tv, but Bundy, he’s pretty good.”
3/31/95 – Rose said that different poems affect different people. He said poetry shows you that there is more than logical deduction.
5/12/95 – Regarding transmission: “if a person is spiritually hungry enough, that’s what matters.”
He said going within was where it was at; that that was seeking self- definition.
“Everybody’s head has a different mud in it. You may go out to the Farm and get your head clear and you do. But then you start thinking that you don’t need to read books or examine other people’s religions, and so your head is muddied up with that.”
Rose said that if you shit yourself don’t go out and tell the world, but be honest with yourself.
Rose said you have to be cautious because some guru’s can hypnotize. They may zap you and you feel completely changed, but after a week you’re back to your old self. They’ll have an explanation, though, which lays the blame on you.
7/9/95 – “People are taught from an early age that you have to ‘take it.’ I don’t have to take anything. All I have to do is die.”
I told him how I get inspired and think I’m close to an answer, then boom! I fall. He said, “I know.” “This is important. You have to accept what comes. You should say to yourself, verbally, what you want, but accept what comes.”
7/18/95 – Someone called Mr. Rose weeping. Afterwards, Rose said the fellow was being attacked, but it was a spiritual attack. Rose said you just start crying, but you don’t know why. He said it’s a good thing because once you get through it you find you gained understanding. The attack opens your head. He said the thing to do is wait it out, knowing that it will end. Get off by yourself because others will think you’re going crazy.
9/2/95 – Rose on celibacy: “those were the most beautiful years of my life.”
11/13/95 – I asked if hypnosis could put one in a state where they would be open to a revelation. He said absolutely.
He said to be aware as much as possible and that meant paying attention to what you were doing and why.
2/10/96 – Rose once said, “You guys, one by one, will forget there is a path. It won’t be a momentous decision, but a slow forgetting.”