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Writings by Richard Rose
Approach to Validity
"Lecture of Questions"
Hear the reading: Approach to Validity
Ownership
Does a man own a house or does the house own him?
Does a man have power or is he overpowered?
Does a man enjoy or is he consumed?
Does a man really reason... or is it all a complex rationalization?
Does a man rationalize... or is he so programmed?
Can a man learn... that which he really wishes to... by himself alone?
Can a man become?
How shall he know what he should become?
Ant Hills
Why build ant hills before knowing what an ant is?
Why do we build conceptual towers of Babel about human thinking... before we know that which thought is?
How can you dare to define thought before knowing the source-cause of all thought? Or the essence of thought?
When you describe bouncing... do you describe the striking object or that which is struck?
Can you start thinking? Can you stop thinking?
Is thought something received or something projected?
Is thought a sort of somatic effluvium, synaptic or chemical? Do we think, or are we caused to think?
Do we observe or do "they" observe? Are we the view or the viewer?
Do we create the idea of creation? Or are we the created idea? Do we experience, or are we experienced?
Is negative thinking (as commonly discussed), negative to man or negative to nature?
Does the brain generate thought like a radio generates the message coming from its speaker?
Is thought limited to the brain?
When a tree bends over does it create wind by waving its branches?
Can theological facts be established by voting?
Is Mary the mother of God or is humanity the mother of God?
Is God determined by victorious armies?
Is virtue established by Psychological edict?... by ecclesiastical vote... or by the requisites of our ultimate essence?
What is sin?... an offense against yourself... an offense against your fellow-man... an offense against God?
Is an offense against God recognized by divine outcry... earthquake or cosmic catastrophe?
Is it a sin to eat meat?
Are the animals our brothers?
Are they possessed of intelligence and soul?
Do animals sin when they eat other animals? Or are such sinning animals pardoned for keeping ecology in balance?
Is it wrong to kill except for food?
Do we do wrong by not eating the people we kill?
The Good
Who is knowledgeable about Good?
Is Good that which we desire... or that which is in itself Good? What is the condition of "being Good" in itself?
Is evil the child of Good... or is it a twin?
If a man drives a horse through a plate glass window should the man be prosecuted... or is it the horse who should be prosecuted?
If a man robs to feed his children... should we prosecute the man, or that which drove him—the children?
If a man rapes a girl should we prosecute... a. the man, b. the girl who tempted him, c. his ancestors for his genetic inheritance of glandular inclination, d. the force that designed mankind?
Equality
What is equality?
Was Samson equal to Delilah?
Is a baby equal to a dying man?
Are you only half of a plan by virtue of not possessing both sexes?
Is peace of mind more important than global peace or herd-peace?
Who or what are you?
Are you only a body?
Are you rather a complex organism? A cell colony... a nature-oriented bundle of conditioned reflexes?
Is the brain a monitoring station designed for the organism's indefinite survival? Or is our body programmed for death (death gene) following procreation?
Is all religion and philosophy merely rationalization emanating from that computer?... to answer constant cellular awareness of death?
Or is the universal belief in life after death an intuitive reading from that computer, a reading not completely translatable into computer symbols which are limited?
Soul
Is there a soul?
Did it exist before the body or must it be developed, grown or evolved?
Prove the following: Mind (as other than somatic awareness), sub-conscious mind, ego, id, superego, chakra, kundalini, tisra til, astral, etheric, causal, desire, aura, halo, ectoplasm, spiritual ear (picks up shabd), conscience, spiritual nectar, philosopher's stone, guardian angel, hydrogen.
What is the correct definition of sanity?
Do our psychologists practice rationalization and make-believe when they substitute behaviorism for a deeper set of factors of human origins or factors of prenatal determination... meaning factors that would bring us to a knowledge of the true essence of man?
Do they not procrastinate the search for real causes?
Do they not manifest a possible paranoia in fear that subjective observations and pursuits may find more substantial things about the essence of man?
Which is the worse schizophrenic? The man who talks in tongues? The schizophrenic who is possessed and cannot help himself? Or... the professionals who create volumes of confusing, complex terminology describing nothing better than their own frustrating dichotomy?
Which is worse? The manic-depressives who brood or babble as a result of excessive voltage, chemical imbalance, some electrolytic deficiency or toxic condition?... or... the pompous alienist who babbles on the witness stand that this or that man should be subjected to ice pick, shock treatment... or electric chair?
Reality
What is real?
Is a mirage real?
Is a dream real? If not—why not?
Is wakefulness a dream?... is it an undefined state qualified by erratic or inferior senses?
Is the objective world real or only that which we believe it to be? Is an idea more real than a planet?
Is a planet merely a projected idea? Is an angel more real than a planet?
If the concept of a space-time continuum is valid... does space exist at all independently of time?
If time does not exist... do things move?
Is that which we see, actually there as it is seen, or is it projected? What is matter... atoms, force fields,—electricity?
Are force-fields projected energy?
Do we witness the material world through or with the senses.
Do we hear as well as the dog, see as well as the eagle, or smell as well as most animals?
Do we not have a limited color range?
If we have a limited color-view, how can we have a complete view of the world?
Is there a pure, or direct sense?
How can we have an accurate world-view if we are prone to the projection of a paradigm?
Self-Knowledge
What about knowledge of yourself?
Are there two selves or just one, (dualism) physical self and soul?
Do desires and prejudices do your thinking for you?
Are you an actor whose act hides the real self?
Do you lie to yourself? If so, how can you know the truth?
Do you really think you know what is the truth?
Is truth decided by that which most people think? Or by that which is?
Is truth decided once and for all by experts or authorities?
Is truth learned... or is it only experienced? Do you act? Are you capable of acting?
Are you merely a bundle of conditioned reflexes? (Behaviorism) If we are such a robot-bundle... how can we be conditioned by another robot?
If we know that we are such a bundle, does not this knowledge give us knowledge of the robot's mechanicalness that might lead to the robot's emancipation?
Has such an answer or knowledge ever been found?
Is it found by faith or is it found by studying the self?
Do we identify the self with that which thinks?
Consciousness
Do we identify the self with that which thinks? Or is the self identified as that which is conscious... even conscious of thinking?
Do we know the nature of thought? What is a thought in itself?
What is the relation between a synapse (or a reaction) and awareness?
What is awareness?
Do you need to understand yourself?
Can you understand yourself by an objective study of behavior?
Can you understand yourself by the study of psychology, by either pure or manipulative psychology?
Is it possible to understand yourself without completely understanding your origin and destiny, and without satisfactorily defining the self?
Is not identification of the self, necessarily the isolation of the self from its environment?
If this is true where is the boundary-line?
Do motivating factors such as the appetites fall into the category of being separate from the self?
How can a "self" drink itself to death?
Is temptation alien to our real Self, or is it intrinsic?
Are we selves of many facets or are we a unique self, artfully invaded?
Do curiosity and desire belong in the category of separateness from the Self?
Is the body part of the Self or a garment of the spirit?
Is the mind part of the Self?
Is the mind in its presently understood potential, all that we can consider as the Self?
When a man loses his mind, where does his self go? Where did the mind go?
If a man lives for twenty years in a state of mental conviction, and then experiences a radical reversal of that conviction, what can be said about such a mind especially when we have regarded it as the ultimate self?
Is mind a faculty through which we observe God... as through a glass darkly?
Is it possible to know God before knowing the Self? Is it possible to know anything?
Do not hypnotic demonstrations with the senses indicate that reality is somehow irrevocably interlocked with belief?
Is the world only that which we believe it to be?
Why Do We Work?
Why do we work so frenetically? Is it to get a better job, a better house and car, so that we can have a better mate, and better children?
Why do fantasies beget agonies?
Is our ulterior self in our heads or in our gonads?
Why do we still have innate spiritual hope, unless our intuition sees a solution?
Is spiritual hope and belief nothing more than a part of a robot's programmed stimulation?
Does a robot have any meaning or purpose beyond the intentions of the designer?
Can a robot program itself in any degree?
Can a robot be programmed by other robots for its own good?
Can a robot be reprogrammed in this manner to seek its definition and self-motivation?
Can logic be defined as well-coordinated robot-functioning, in which the robot reacts with seeming consciousness of its own programmed state of acceptance to every situation and suggestion?
Is sanity defined by logic?
Or do we attain it by being logical?
Is it sane to wish to know about our Real Essence?
Can the individual decide?
Can an individual decide on something outside the scope of that which is his limited perspective?
Is man doomed to predestiny?
Or is a man doomed to forever struggle in the uncertainty and inability of ever knowing whether he can act or decide, or not?
Does existence necessitate consciousness? Is man capable of self-consciousness?
Or is man merely aware of the idea of self-consciousness?
Can a man watch himself?
Are there two people in such an act, or is one only the view?
Thought
What is thought?
Is thought synaptic or spiritual?
Is thought the reaction of cholinesterase upon acetylcholine?
Is thought the viewing of our own projections, and nothing more?
If thoughts travel in telepathy, what is the vehicle for this travel?
Do thoughts travel in another dimension, or is their action similar to that of electricity?
Protoplasm ends and thought begins where?
What psychological scientist has discovered this link between thought and matter?
Does the body manufacture subtle little essences called thoughts?
Or does the body develop receiving mechanisms or chemicals so that it will be aware of possible external essences?
Would such an external essence be called mind? If so would that mind be external to the body?
Are we then a body being influenced by an external mind?
Or are we the external mind?
Is thought transmitted in or with electrical energy?
Does a man's soul or essence make contact with the body of the man in energy generated by the gap of the synapses?
Is the inner man any more than conscious energy?
Does all energy come from food, or is it possible that we may draw energy from higher spiritual levels?
Do we transmute food-energy into other forms of energy such as mental energy, or is mental energy poured into us from a universal mind?
Are thoughts related to endocrine glands?
Is it possible that man can, with energy transmuted upward, produce thoughts with volition, rather than just submit to reacting?
Is memory an automatic recording?
What sees, what remembers, what reacts to perception and memory?
Does not the mind also have the unique ability which is forgetting, and is not all experience that has been gained, lost, when the mind forgets?
Do space and time both exist in space-time, or do neither exist?
Is real knowing, not knowing?
What is valid? Is a rock valid?
Unless we know that which a rock is to itself, how can we know its validity? If the rock is only our projection, does it have any validity?
Shall the finite mind ever perceive the infinite?
Is it true that the only question worth answering is whether or not we should commit suicide?
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