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

Meditation 225
The standard message we pick up in esoteric texts is that if we do not see the truth, it is because
we are seeing through a glass darkly. There is nothing hidden. Everything is known. We just fail to
see the obvious. Our capacity to acquire direct-knowledge is entirely dependent upon the degree to
which we remove obstacles to knowing. We cannot hope to perceive either life, ourselves, or God
clearly while our perception is colored or distorted. We cannot isolate the true “I” that sees our
experience so long as it identifies with any of the many sheaths and filters that cover its eye. Many
specific issues regarding values, egos, attitudes, etc. have been discussed thus far that obstruct our
clear vision and must be worked through in meditation. In addition, there are even larger mental
gestalts prior to these variables that affect not only what we see, but how we see. Fortunately, these
obstacles to seeing can themselves be seen.
There are three main categories of factors affecting subjective perception that Rose asks us to
examine in our self-study: states-of-mind, moods, and subliminal states-of-consciousness. Each acts
like colored eyeglasses through which we perceive our lives. When they are worn long enough, the
mind adjusts for their distortion and we see the view on the other side of them as if it was reality “asis.”
It is only when we take the glasses off and see the radical shift in our quality of perception that we
suddenly realize how much our view was colored all along. The common significance among these
three categories of states is that we see and experience life through them, not with them.
States-of-mind are various massive concept-structures or gestalts which usually come about
over a period of years of evaluation and increasing conviction. It is a composite thinking pattern that
has as its chief characteristic one of the basic desires or fears of the individual in question and its
resultant self-justifications, rationalizations, and attitude compulsions.
Another way of describing a state-of-mind is that it is an identification with the view of life
from a point-of-reference that is incorrectly located, a range of perspective that is incomplete, and
through a filter that distorts whatever much is seen, from that vantage point. It is an assumption
about the nature of things, with conviction, based upon one’s experience and conditioning.
However, they can also be brought about very quickly as a result of an extreme physical or
mental experience. Likewise, a traumatic experience or incident of intense suffering is about the only
thing that will actually bring about a change in the state-of-mind.
Rose warns: “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 by self-observation” (Rose, 1978, p. 167). He adds:
“As long as you are in a state-of-mind, you will not have direct-mind communication” (Rose, 1985, p.
105). He also advises us to remember back to our earlier years when we were able to think more
clearly and to recall the factors which made us think clearly then—and eliminate those that later
damaged or corrupted our innocent minds, if we wish to think clearly today. He explains: “In this
fashion we must become as a little child” (Rose, 1978, p. 168).
Rose poses this question to the seeker: “One wonders if the human mind will ever be able to
discern, among these [our] many states, that singular state that might be called sanity” (Rose, 1978, p.
160).
He relates the principles of reversing one’s vector and backing away from untruth to the process
of self-inquiry:
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, the state (of spiritual realization, which) we can be sure is the only true state-ofmind.
(Rose, 1978, p. 167).