Do things for the sake of a higher power, and it will correctly guide your every step. There is a god within every man... that finds his contact with the Chief Engineer of this scenario... the Absolute God that has everything planned or is able to at least enable us to see that everything is for the best. And the best includes eternal contentment at the cost of momentary inconvenience.
Yesterday was Richard Rose's birthday. He would have been 99 years old.
The American Buddha. The last unquestionably enlightened being of the 20th century. Mr. Rose, as he was called, was only ever interested in one thing his whole life: the Truth. He got special permission to enter a Capuchin seminary at age 12, believing the way to Truth was to become a Catholic monk. He was disillusioned with the worldliness and lack of critical thinking within the Church, so he left at age 17 to find the Truth through science. He studied chemistry and physics and worked in a laboratory and on submarines, but was again disillusioned by the whole system of science as just another ego trip. Rose then decided to embark on the path of mysticism, making his body "a laboratory, not a cesspool." He became a vegetarian, stopped drinking alcohol, coffee, and tea, and became completely celibate, later remarking "Those years of celibacy and solitude were the most joyful of my life."
At the age of 30, in a hotel room in Seattle, Richard Rose had an experience of death as had Ramana Maharshi half a century earlier, wherein the last of his ego was dropped and he experienced God Realization. For years he lived a quiet, unassuming life afterward, not speaking about his experience until 1972, when he gave his first public lecture. The next year he would publish The Albigen Papers, a book outlining the system he had used 26 years earlier to gain enlightenment. Rose would continue to give talks and teach a handful of students at his ranch in West Virginia, until the 1990s when his health began to decline from Alzheimer's.
When asked if consciousness survives death Mr. Rose said "Yes. If it did not, I wouldn't talk to you. If oblivion were what is waiting for you, I would keep my mouth shut. It would be better for your peace of mind. It's better to have peace of mind if you're going no-place. If I had discovered that oblivion were the answer, I wouldn't talk."
But immortality is not all it's cracked up to be. You have to cultivate the enlightened mind in this lifetime in order to prepare for very real prospect of continuing forever: "You have to go through these traumas in life--now, while you're on Earth--in order to improve your situation after death. Everyone may be immortal, but we don't all go to the same place when we die. Awareness may not terminate for anyone, but you can't expect to advance into a dimension that you haven't mentally vaccinated yourself to beforehand. If the average mind--with its convictions and limitations--landed in an Absolute dimension, it would think it was either in oblivion or hell."
And about his own death, he said: "My life is no longer tied to this planet. This place is a stage, and when you leave, you turn out the lights."
After his death the teachings of Richard Rose have been kept alive by the TAT Foundation (Truth and Transmission), in West Virginia.
If you want you can buy his book The Albigen Papers at the link to the right.
