Richard Rose’s Psychology of the Observer The Path to Reality Through the Self

Self-Definition, Point-of-Reference, and Retroversing the Projected Ray 161
psychological integrity, etc., with the rationalization that the spirit is forever free, life is for unlimited
experience, and everything is perfect in its own way.
Rose is quite strict in insisting on the principle of one’s becoming the truth, and doing this by
becoming truthful in all ways; not by dismissing all human experience, even the most debilitating, as
irrelevant to a postulated spiritual essence one has not verified. Although, according to one way of
looking at it, this latter point may ultimately be true, Rose states that the proper ordering of experience
in the relative dimension is essential in order for one to ever realize spirit, otherwise one may
become “stuck” in some pathological dead-end within the illusion and never be able to get out.
To start with, however, he wants to counter the strongest programming we have working on
us; the one from which all other delusions derive: our identification with the body and the workings
of somatic consciousness. Rose offers a realistic explanation of how to assess ourselves, based on his
own experience:
It will do us no good to deny the body as being part of us, but it is good to deny that it
is all of us. Only when we have learned to become aware when the body is unconscious,
will we be able to look upon the body-type of consciousness as being inferior and
illusory. (Rose, 1979c, p. 63).
This is another reason why he counters materialistic psychologies and claims the proper direction
to take in pursuing self-definition is back towards the source of awareness, rather than our
habitual tendency to go outward into cataloging the endless permutations of relative variables, or
indulging in the delight of their continually changing configurations. The “television set” of life is
always on and there is an endless variety of shows from which to choose. Only the viewer is constant—and
real.
This is not to be accepted merely as an inspiring theory. The practice of self-study reveals to
one’s inner vision that our previous sense of solid selfhood is not as consistent or unified as we have
always trusted it to be. Rose here refers to the two levels or aspects of self-definition, human and
transpersonal, that could be regarded as two ends of a ray: “Man is not an individual as much as he is
a changing mass. He is, on the other hand, an unchanging unit of life, or absolute light, that the
changing, relative man is unaware of” (Rose, 1979c, p. 35). The work is thus dual in nature: to thoroughly
know the structure and nature of human experience, while also deepening and clarifying the
quality of awareness of experience.
Rose generally avoids any metaphysical, cosmological discourse, as such comments can be
nothing more than conceptual speculation to the listener who has not yet realized the truth to which
he can only allude, and as such, can only become one more distraction or trap. However, he does
occasionally risk describing what awaits the seeker at the end of the road, for the sake of encouragement
and quickening the intuition:
I am quite convinced that each person is a finger of the sun. The celestial sun; an
Absolute Reality. The Atman and the Brahman—each person. That’s the reason you
find God by looking inside. Really finding yourself is finding where that Being touches
you. And then when you find it—you find that it IS you. I’m not saying that it is a part
of you; I say that it IS you. (Rose, 1985, p. 234).
This provides a more complete understanding of what self-definition involves. First, we must
accurately identify the Atman in its earthly manifestation—meaning one’s human self. Simulta-