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Richard Rose
Writings
States of Mind
This is a fair-use excerpt from The Albigen Papers by Richard Rose. From Fifth Paper, Obstacles to Transcendental Effort. You can read the entire book by contacting the publisher at the links below.
States of mind are like massive gestalts. Psychologically, they have never been given the proper consideration. Most people are not aware of the existence of a state of mind, other than one similar to their own. When they encounter another state of mind, they may reject it as aberrated or abnormal. Normality is always that which we are, not that which the other fellow is. And because of this lack of understanding, friction and even violence result.
Psychologists try to create a sort of universal state of mind, in regard to conduct and behavior. They have recently gone a step further and imposed "sensitivity sessions" upon some of the students of the country to force a precipitation of tensions, and to bring about a homogeneity of reaction-patterns.
The psychologists and psychiatrists will fail because, again, they do not know all the factors, and specifically because they can, at best, be responsible for creating newer states of mind which shall conceal more deadly resentments than the possessor had before.
Some of us are aware that we have different states of mind. However, most of us are unaware of the many states of mind that exist among different people, nor are we aware of the tremendous role that these states of mind play in religion, politics, and war. Some states of mind are easy to see. For instance, similar states of mind are found in close families and among people of restricted social contact, such as the inmates of monasteries and prisons. Inmates of such institutions or families have several other states of mind, besides the one which is common to all of the other members or inmates.
Let us not confuse the term "state of mind" with mood. The mood is transitory and lacking in conviction, and could be better explained as a state of perception, a clouded glass.
We are lucky if we only have two or three states of mind. We are still more lucky if we know that they are there, within us. A state of mind is invariably a fairly composite thinking pattern, which has as its chief characteristic one of the basic desires of the individual in question. A more dominant state of mind may result from the synthesis of two or more desires, and the synthesis of their corresponding philosophic rationalizations.
It is easier to describe states of mind, and the manner in which they are altered, than it is to define them. We may take the case of two men, Mr. A. and Mr. B., meeting at a bar. Mr. A. uses a perfectly harmless word, penguin. Within a few minutes, and with little or no explanation, Mr. B. has knocked him to the floor. Mr. A. leaves, and within the hour is robbed by Mr. C., and finally, in another hour, Mr. A. may encounter Mr. D, and kill the latter when Mr. D. places his hand in his pocket, thus reminding Mr. A. of the robbery of an hour before.
And yet, three hours before, Mr. A. may have been a benevolent extrovert. An analyst might ascribe the violent action of Mr. B. to paranoid foundations, or might say that Mr. C. was a robber because his mother tried to abort him. Paranoia is not a state of mind, but a singular example of a state of perception in which we can see the difference between the two—state of mind and state of perception. With paranoia as a qualification of perception, or as a manner of looking at incoming impressions through bruised sensitivities, there is no doubt that some of our states of mind will be affected, but not necessarily replaced.
Any creature that has been repeatedly injured becomes paranoid. In Hubbard's Dianetics, such repeated injury leaves a mental scar which is called an engram. This scar or engram must be reckoned with in all future experiences related in any way to the experience that caused the engram or scar.
If the being were not paranoid, it could be more easily killed or crippled as an individual, and eliminated as a species. Paranoia says to the body—people are going to hurt you as they did before. You must adjust and train your personality to either frighten them, or train yourself to be more aggressive.
States of mind are various massive concept-structures which usually come about over a period of years of evaluation and increasing conviction. However, it is important to remember that they can be brought about very quickly as a result of an extreme physical or mental experience. The case of Mr. A. is given to show roughly how this may happen.
We take Mr. A. and suppose that he was a young ministerial student. He has led a rather sheltered life, but there have been times when he was insulted or in some manner afflicted for his gentle ways. His gentle ways were part of a passive state of mind, and his reactions to a life of mysticism helped form his passive attitude. And he may have also developed an additional, tangential philosophy, which saw God's will in his work—and God's protection.
The man who knocked him to the floor was a Catholic. Mr. B. thought that Mr. A. was poking ridicule at the Catholic nuns by his reference to the penguin, and Mr. B. also thought that he was doing God's will.
The violence suffered by Mr. A. caused an abrupt change oi mind. And when the threat of continued violence aids the paranoid element in his thinking, he feels quite justified in taking quick and violent action.
The man subject to an abrupt change of mind-state need not be timid. Strong, brave men have suddenly been reduced to tears, and bullies have suddenly become cowards under brutal treatment, or in an incident of terror. Drugs inflict a similar sort of punishment upon the addict, but the metamorphosis is so subtle and gradual that only after the victim is hopelessly addicted will there be any intense suffering.
It might be said that a traumatic experience or incident of intense suffering are about the only things that will actually bring about a change in the state of mind.
The congestion of the population has brought our attention to a sharper awareness of many different states of mind in different people, and the need to understand such states is also felt. Of course, understanding them is better than trying to alter them before understanding them. And understanding them in ourselves is of greater priority—even in the search to understand others.
I think that the study of states of mind is far more important than the focusing of attention on incidental reactions or behavior patterns. Such a study can come about only by direct experience, and the faculty for having direct experience can come about by particular systems of developing sensitivity, or by a change in the being or nature of the observer that will facilitate his rapport with another mind.
States of mind are not easily supplanted, and a person capable of switching quickly to an alternate or opposite state of mind could well be labeled schizophrenic. We are all schizoid to a degree, but not as obsessed as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. We do have such obsessions, and they do change us for a period of time. We can examine the act of sexual intercourse, and note that most people (if not all) have states of mind that vary or change with the act. The person who begins is not the same person who finishes. This has baffled people for ages. It can be blamed on abrupt chemical changes brought on by intense physical activity, (endocrine influence) or it may be an automatic governor, which is part of the human structure to alter the pleasure-drive, once nature has attained its goal . . . so that the potential parent will not endanger his or her health in the pursuit of more pleasure, since nature is interested in the children.
It is because the sex act has such a pronounced ability to change the state of mind, that we find so many violent and bizarre murders connected with sex. Sometimes the partner who acts as a devastating catalyst is resented.
Different ethnic groups have different states of mind, and there is no crime in this difference. The crime lies with the psychologist who thinks that he can banish it by denying it. The Negroes are aware of this wall of difference, and protest (this is the admission of the knowledge of difference) that the Whites do not "think black." And, of course, the standard reply is that the Blacks do not "think white."
It would be laborious, if not impossible, to go into all the factors that trigger conflict between states of mind. Some may be genetic, and some may be acquired. For instance, the mouse has a state of mind quite different from that of the cat. And the cat's is different from that of the dog, unless the cat is a lion. The cat has no respect for the mouse. There is no rapport. The mouse is geared for terror. It is numbed or hypnotized by terror and does not utilize any proper degree of resourcefulness when confronted by the cat. Perhaps, like the Christian martyrs, the mouse is also geared to enjoy his own immolation.
The same occurs with people. Those who have been raised for generations to have a contempt for fear will also have a contempt for those whose chief feature is fear. Or an ethnic group that practices sex control may have difficulty in having rapport with another ethnic group that believes in no sexual restraints.
The effect of these states of mind on political levels is not our concern here. We are concerned with those states of mind which stand like towers of Babel between religious, philosophical, and transcendental minds. We only need to pick up some of the books that are being printed today on psychology, sociology, and theology to witness with amazement the many approaches to a common central point. If Aldous Huxley seemed to test our flexibility in reaching out for new understanding, he could not hold a candle to such artists of confusion as Brown and Roszak. And perhaps this writing will come to many as a hodge-podge of emptiness or a surfeiting of deliberate complexity.
Let us examine the drug-state of mind . . . if it is possible to find rapport with addicts without smoking from their pipe or drinking from their needle. Or let us begin to study religion. We may be attracted to a spiritual teacher who is "hooked" on drugs, and despise the teacher who is addicted to alcohol. We may never know that the alcoholic had as much or more to offer. And what's more, we may wind up with an aura of injected needles instead of a halo.
We can take a step further, and presume that men of the four major paths—the fakir, the yogi, the monk and the philosopher-have divested themselves of all obsessions, such as sex, drugs, or alcohol And we will still be confounded by their distinct states of mind.
The monk, on a lesser level, is a person who thinks he is fully evolved, spiritually. His conviction marks his state of mind. He eats, works, and sleeps the part of the monk. And he finds peace of mind which he identifies as God's hand.
The fakir works on a lower level than the monk. He feels that he will find spirituality by controlling the body and its sensations. He does not understand the monk. The monk may understand him, but will be unable to get through to him long enough to convince the fakir in regards to the efficacy of a milder form of asceticism.
The yogi occupies a rung above the monk, but the monk does not always understand him. The yogi understands the monk. He sees the monk wrapped in the confusion of sublimated sex, and in autohypnotic techniques which seem to be crude. The monk is begging the answer, rather than seeking it. The raj-yogi is looking for the true state of consciousness, and is aware that others only think they have it.
Still more free, and advanced, is the Fourth Way Traveler. This is the sly man, or the philosopher. It is apparent to those on the fourth step that they themselves, while they were on the lower rungs, could not comprehend or tolerate those who were later discovered to be on more advanced steps. And now, viewing those, who, in turn, cannot tolerate them, the Fourth Way Travelers are amazed that sincere, dynamic individuals dedicated to finding the Truth can have so much lack of understanding and rapport.
So that the thing to observe (for each level) is the level upon which you stand. The pursuit of Truth necessarily involves the understanding of present states of mind, first. Then there follows the automatic shedding of nonsense-components of these states of mind, from which comes an evolution of mental purity, approaching, all the while, that state which is called satori or cosmic consciousness. And by whatever name, we can be sure that it is the only true state of mind.
It follows then that this writing is not intended to be an attempt to change human conduct, except in the individual, by the individual. We must first be aware that we are the victims of our states of mind, not proud possessors of them. And we can be aware of them, (to take a page from Ouspensky) by self-observation.
Self-observation, meditation, or self-remembering generally have automatic self-correcting result. It is almost as though we were operating on a cybernetic law. The circuit is apt to clear itself, once the trouble is located and admitted.
Strangely enough, this automatic clearing of circuits through the application of energy inward, may be the first realization for the individual of free will. This process involves the slave knowing the degree of his enslavement, and utilizing mechanical processes to put an end to his present state of mechanicalness.
When we embark upon a course of self-change in order to purify our consciousness, the first nice thing that happens to us is that we develop a new compassion for our fellowman, and tolerance for his moody moments. We realize that he, too, is laboring beneath circumstances that are not of his making. And his states of mind have been imposed upon him by his environment and by his colored perception apparatus.
But what is more important and more wonderful is that we realize that we are at last on our way to becoming a vector of Truth. We also learn that there are ways to change our dominant state of mind that do not involve the use of drugs. We find, if we look hard enough, that there are helpers, or teachers, even if such are only books.
There is somehow an urge within each man that wishes for him to be whole. The designer of our computers did not program us to be totally responsive to the hypnoses of nature. It is possible that we are. in fact, programmed to periodically resist any dominant state of mind, so that we will be prevented from destroying ourselves in dissipation—thus destroying nature's most valuable herd in the process. This concept finds more meaning if we observe the innocence and conscience of children. And all of this implies that the designer of the computer had no other choice than to let us get a glimpse of those things which obsess us.
To observe these states of mind we need only to sit quietly and observe the present troubles that we have. It is best done when we are troubled, because then we have a high incentive-impetus to use for energy.
We should also do a little remembering and go back to the days when we were able to think more clearly, when our thinking bore convictions by which we risked our lives and our fortunes. Those convictions may have changed, but it is not appropriate that we look back upon those years as being foolish just because we were young. We must remember the factors which made us think clearly then, if we wish to think clearly today. And it is in this fashion that we must become as a little child.
There can be no successful, scientific study of psychology, nor can there be any promising individual search for Truth without a better understanding of these phases called states of mind. Any attempt at analysis by viewing behavioral causes or environmental factors will only bring us to a knowledge of that which causes the state of mind, and then only if we absolutely know all of the factors. These factors include all things in our transcendental environment, as well as the manifest environment.
Most of us have awakened from a convincing nightmare, or have recovered from a very hypnotic love affair. Some of us have been brutalized into accepting a state of mind common to our fellows, such as is found in armies and penitentiaries. And we have shaken our heads in amazement to think that our mind could be changed so easily. Yes, the psychologists and 'psychiatrists have experienced this confusion of convictions too, or else the high rate of suicide among them would not exist.
Men have had dreams that have shaken their lives. The augury of dreams or the dreams themselves, have caused battles or wars.
It is also true that transcendental phenomena have a great influence on states of mind. Hypnosis is no myth. And witchcraft has been used successfully against people who did not even know that a spell had been cast. We can only surmise that beings of another dimension, being strategically invisible or superior, may have profound effects upon us. If this is true, then the modern psychologists will have trouble finding compatibility with such evidence, because they have agreed to believe that man is only a body, and that transcendental experiences are really somatic maladies.
So that when St. Paul was struck down on the road to Damascus, and endured for the rest of his life a profoundly altered state of mind, we are told by the psychologists through the lips of Huxley, that Paul did, in reality, fall victim to an epileptic attack . . . possibly. We could go a step further into absurdity, and say that Paul had just returned from visiting the local psychiatrist, the witch of Endor, who had just succeeded in purging him of his violent homicidal syndrome. This explanation would prevent any shame for Christianity, by showing that Paul was cured of his epilepsy and violence by the local witch-craft union.
We like to think we are logical people, living in an orderly manner. However, when we experience a change of state of mind, all of our logic and all of our so-called professional and authoritarian attitudes are of no use to us. We find that we have been changed, and it disturbs us.
Jung found it expedient to examine the Tibetan Book of the Dead. For therein is a hint that all that exist are states of mind. And unless the individual finds some stable manner to keep track of the true self, in the many turbulent and often terrifying nightmares of life, what will happen to us hence, when we can no longer flee back into the living body by simply awakening?
I have only found two systems that I would recommend for studying the mind directly. One is the Gurdjieff-Ouspensky system, and the other is Zen.
Subliminal States Of Consciousness and Their Effect Upon Discernment
In matters of religion, a field where the guiding intuition is of subliminal nature (being intangible and inscrutable), we find that many deciding factors for religious judgment are related to subliminal impressions.
There is a large gap between the thinking of the scientist or materialist, and the pursuer of abstract values. There are always doubts in the minds of these two adversaries about their own individual infallibility. The hardheaded materialist may come to doubt himself, if he falls in love or has a precognitive dream. Or if he witnesses a miracle. (Something not explained in his orderly book of rules on the behavior of matter.) On the other hand, the religious zealot who is convinced that the mundane or sensory world is illusory, or illusory to a great degree, will have his faith shaken (if faith happens to be for him an accepted force), when some person closely related to him becomes seriously ill or dies. He rushes out and calls a doctor or lives to curse the beliefs, or to doubt them seriously . . . if he fails to call the doctor.
A subliminal state of consciousness is a state of awareness that is very strong, and yet very elusive as regards scrutiny or analysis. We may be conscious of something, of a force or strange ability within ourselves, and yet not be able to identify it or describe it.
This state manifests itself to people under the influence of certain drugs, under mental shock, under prolonged mental fatigue, and sometimes in the period between wakefulness and sleep. They are not states of mind, if we are to identify states of mind with self-observation and conviction. It is almost impossible, if not impossible, to study subliminal states, except subjectively. They are worthy of mention here, because they invariably have an ability to affect states of mind and affect them in a drastic manner. A person on the brink of a nervous breakdown, or the physical breakdown that is often labelled as insanity, generally is disturbed by many of these subliminal states of consciousness. A dying person, judging from deathbed testimony, has confusion of some magnitude, as a result of strange consciousness-states.
We may correctly decide that subliminal states of consciousness are more dangerous in being blocks to finding our true self, than those experiences which are labelled "states of mind." This would be determined by the recognition that subliminal states are more difficult to apprehend and examine than are states of mind.
I remember the early hours of anguish that preceded the great spiritual revelation, which is described in the Three Books of the Absolute. I saw the entire population of humanity, milling upward as a heap of maggot-men . . . Their pleasures were pathetic. The whole scene, as viewed from my body-consciousness state, was dismal and so filled with despair that I wrestled with my sanity, or that which we call sanity—that which affixes to the body-processes, a pretence of reasonableness and ultimate reality.
Only when my cherished sanity seemed to evaporate did I realize that this vision was only real as regards the perspective of the minds of men. In relation to the Absolute (which is real Reality), the whole thing was a mental tableau. It was a tableau of physical existence as opposed to ultimate Essence. The tableau is very much alive until we realize that it is mental. When we are about to step out of the mental into pure essence, we still have with us the memories of our evanescent intelligence, and the memories of relatives (particularly those of our children) who are but the sad extensions of our game-playing. We are aware that these children still believe that they are real (meaning that their self-estimate is not questioned by them), and this is momentarily torturous, since in our memory' they are tied to us with love.
I might liken the situation to one in which a person might fall in love with a mannequin or robot . . . or with a Galatea. In the game of life, such a Galatea has life breathed into it, but of itself, it is nothing, and that which it imagines itself to be is nothing. The being that loves the Galatea is no better than the statue. When the creator of the Galatea comes into the deeper realization, it sees the Galatea as ego-born fiction. This observer still has not crossed over and seen his corporeal self-belief as fiction. The observer is also a statue, except that part of him that is Absolute. For the Absolute is forever impersonal.