Ken Wilber: Only Religion Can Save The World

Ken Wilber explains why only religion provides the structures and tools necessary for both growing up and waking up. Nothing else can create a cohesive community that gives meaning to our lives, or provide the means of escaping suffering and discovering our true identity.

Richard Rose

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.

Richard Rose: Zen and Death

Do we want the Truth or do we want to be "educated"? There is a tendency of people in control, whether in universities or in governments, to want to "educate". Not for the Truth, but for the convenience of the moment, thinking they are the prophets of the zeitgeist, and by their manipulation of the public mind the will bring people around to the "right" direction.
- Richard Rose

Richard Rose talks on everything. He talks about the four categories of mystical experiences, how society conditions us to believe lies regarding who we are and what death is, the near death experience, and the importance of finding the Truth and who we really are. We exist before we are born and continue to exist after we die. The purpose of life is finding this Truth out for ourselves through direct experience. Runs 1 hour 10 minutes.

The Land of the Disappearing Buddha

A look at Zen in Japan (37 years ago). Runs 52 minutes.

Life at a Japanese Zen Monastery

This is what the West is missing. You can't live like that, you have to pay "property tax" which means you rent the land you live on from the government. The existence of "property tax" binds you to the wage slave economy. You cannot escape and become self-sufficient. You cannot have true monasticism and simple living with the economic system of the West.

"Peter Barakan interviews Muho Noelke, the German abbot of Antaiji, a Zen monastery that is located deep in the mountains, close to the Japanese sea. The community commits itself to the practice of zazen and the study of the Buddha's teaching, while cultivating the fields around the temple, cutting grass and trees and doing construction work to keep self-sufficient. Muho explains about zazen, community life and the relation between teacher and student."

Richard Rose, American Zen Master

Richard Rose is often described as being a Zen master, although his inquiry is a lot more similar to Ramana Maharshi's method. The Zen part comes from his insistence on direct transmission. Rose lived in a Catholic seminary before becoming a scientist and working in various fields including physics and biology. In 1947 while meditating, he died and experienced at first everything and then nothing, and spent the rest of his life trying to get people to have the very same revelation. Richard Rose died in 2005 after struggling with Alzheimer's for several years.

Here are clips from what appears to be two lectures, totalling 24 minutes on the soul, the Absolute, and the ego, as well as becoming the Truth instead of just speculating on it.

Alan Watts' God Complex

An hour long talk by Alan Watts on psychology, psychiatry, western thought, mysticism, and knowing you are God. Wonderful question and answer session at the end.

I'm A Skeptic

From Entangled Minds (from Xtranormal.com) comes a five minute video in which a self-proclaimed skeptic from the 1980s approaches an attractive scientist (as attractive as a computer generated image can be I guess) and they have a discussion about what is and is not science. The self-proclaimed skeptic (skep-dick as they are referred to on The Urban Mystic) talks about how folks like him make proclamations from preconcieved beliefs about what is and is not real. The scientist, like Ken Wilber did in his deep science video, explains that there is a scientific method and that experiments need to be conducted and theories revised. Science, unlike skep-dick-ism (or fundamaterialism), does not start with the conclusion and work its way back using circular reasoning. Science is open-ended and willing to change based on new data.


"I'm A Skeptic" video




Ken Wilber on deep science





Also, Daniel Drasin's "Zen and the Art of Debunkery" has just been updated for 2010. The link on the official Irked-Confusion site will have to be changed now.

Oneness & The Heart of the World

Trappist Monk Fr. Thomas Keating discusses Christian mysticism and the mysteries implicite in the oneness of God. He relates the experiences of Christian mysticism with Zen and integral theory. From the official description:



"In this talk, Father Keating discusses the dynamic nature of God and the paradox implicit in experiencing divine oneness. With humor and wisdom, he explores the practice of contemplative prayer, and how we might begin to approach God through being present to our senses." (Length 34:41)