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

226 Richard Rose’s Psychology of the Observer: The Path to Reality Through the Self
More specifically, he is saying that the final objective of the meditative path is to transcend all
states-of-mind, to NO state-of-mind, which is the only true “state-of-mind.”
In case the need for this mental purification and concurrent change in state-of-being is not
obvious enough, Rose offers a more ominous reason to be motivated for such work...while there is
still time for it:
In the Tibetan Book of the Dead is the 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? (Rose,
1978, p. 169-70).
An obvious experiential corollary is that if we can so readily forget ourselves when dreaming,
how can we confidently assume we will remember ourselves when dead?
Moods are States-of-Perception which are qualified means of seeing or perceiving and are
generally of a short duration, being more factors of coloration than lasting states of conviction. Moods
affect states-of-mind by triggering or reawakening them. One develops a conviction based upon
continued moods.
Rose has evaluated the psychology of human nature and found that fear, seduction/acquisition,
and nostalgia are the three primary moods from which all emotions derive. If one analyzes
one’s own subjective leanings (including their more pure expression in dreams), it is seen that every
emotional impulse can be traced back to one or some combination of these as its root. For example, he
has stated that all appetites are from the acquisition mood, whereas guilt is a combination of memory/
nostalgia and fear. By some extension, I have found that the awareness of love and death brings
about or enters into the mood of nostalgia.
Rose has added a new insight to higher psychology by pointing out the special significance of
nostalgia. This mood is usually regarded as being either pleasantly idealized reverie of happier days
or futile, wistful longing for something lost. Yet, he advises us to look more closely into our moods of
nostalgia for a serious clue. He claims: “Nostalgia is a window to the soul. It is the soul’s memory or
view of prior experience” (lecture, 1978). We might gently ask ourselves: where is that innocence and
quality of being now?
Rose asks us:
What is this thing in us that causes us to turn to fables; to dream of eternality? Even if
we know that we cannot escape our lechery and hypocrisy. Down deep inside ourselves
we yearn for permanent peace, inviolable virginity, and love without lust or penalty
(Rose, 1985, p. 35).
He elaborates on this greater meaning of nostalgia as spiritual yearning:
Nostalgia is or can be a hang-up. But it is also the homing instinct of the mundane
mind...that draws it back to the Father. I maintain that nostalgia has something to tell
us. We are programmed to indulge in life, but the haunting nostalgia is the subliminal
message from another plane (personal correspondence, 1978).
In these comments, he is pointing to a feeling, almost a state-of-being, we all have touched
during our truest moments; a remembrance that leads us back home: “When the person consciously