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This past March, she was also gracious enough to leave the West Virginia farm, where Mrs. Rose taught and where TAT continues to operate, to speak to the Self Knowledge Symposium in North Carolina.
What was most surprising, and rewarding, about Mrs. Rose's talk was what a profound and thrilling enigma she was to me. I could not place her neatly into any mold. She is neither just a devoted housewife, nor an entirely modern, tradition-bucking woman. Instead, she is a woman of conservative values, devoted to her family, as well as to a spiritual path that takes her far deeper than mainstream culture usually dares to go.
The Symposium was delighted to catch up with Mrs. Rose a few weeks ago.
It started back in high school when one of my teachers, my French teacher actually, got us interested in the existentialist writers. All through my senior year I was reading various authors—Kierkegaard, Sartre, Camus.
Then I left for college, majored in art and got very involved in my studies and, of course, a social life. My instructors were interested in Zen and Buddhism, but on a very superficial level. I tried transcendental meditation, but I didn't get serious about spirituality until I got to graduate school and heard Richard Rose give a lecture in Providence, Rhode Island. When I heard his lecture it was like a bell went off. I think the curiosity had been in there all along, but hearing his talk unearthed it, and I knew that this was something that I would be a part of for the rest of my life.
How did your relationship with Richard Rose develop?
The first time I met him was at his lecture. I heard about his lecture from a friend of mine. I was intrigued, because he approached things from a purely psychological, common sense perspective. After coming out of transcendental meditation, where they wanted you to pay all this money to go to higher and higher levels, and you had to chant all these mantras, it was refreshing to me to know I didn't have to do all that. I remember specifically asking him (because I was wondering what I should do) what he thought of transcendental meditation and he replied, "There's plenty of time to sleep in the graveyard." He didn't want to offend anybody in particular; he was just speaking his truth. There were a lot of people in the audience from Zen groups, and they were pretty belligerent with him, asking sarcastic questions, trying to be clever. He had a way of coming back at them that I was really impressed with. There were no arguments. He didn't believe in arguments. He was there to talk about his experience, and it just really impressed me.
The first irony was that we both had the same last name. We were sort of amused by that, and he invited me to his farm in West Virginia. There was some sort of pull there, so I did end up going down and spent part of the summer there. There were a lot of students on the farm at the time, and we were all in our early twenties trying to follow a spiritual path. He was always available to people.
Then I moved to Pittsburgh to work at an art school, and while I was there I attended Pyramid Zen meetings, our study groups. I decided in January of 1977 to move down to West Virginia and live in Richard's house in Benwood. There were three other women there and several men, all from various groups in other cities. Richard and I began working together as student and teacher. One by one, people were going off and getting married or finding their own way—their own lives. He and I became close. We've been married for twenty-four years now, and we have a daughter.
How did you balance a teacher/student and husband/wife relationship at the same time?
You have the normal, day-to-day, domestic problems that cause people to be less than enamored with each other, but I had the advantage of having him as a teacher first, having him as a friend first, and that seemed to be the foundation of our relationship. I always admired him, always felt like this is one of the greatest men I've ever met.
People constantly called him, which kept us mindful of his position. He was like a doctor, on call twenty-four hours a day. My position was one of support. My path was a devotional one. That was okay with me, because if I had to devote my life to any one person, it would be Richard Rose. My lesson in life has always been about commitment, and my marriage to Richard and involvement with the group gave me the opportunity to work on that and to shed some of my fickle nature.
What's your ultimate goal?
In our regular TAT meetings we always come around to questions like that. My ultimate goal is to be able to accept my own death. I know I put my head on this work from the first time I met Richard, and even though I wavered back and forth, I kept my head on this idea of "Who am I?" and "Who is it that dies?" And there have been experiences along the way where I've gotten glimpses and answers to some of my questions.
What have been some of the milestones on your path?
All of my milestone moments came out of trauma. Once, Arnama Pandeer, a woman from Pittsburgh, was leading a session on Richard's book, "The Direct Mind Experience," at a TAT meeting. She was going around the room asking questions, and she looked at me and said, "Well Cecy, if you're not your thoughts, who are you?" It stopped my head completely. I've heard that question for twenty-five years, but it had to come out of her mouth at that particular moment to have that effect. I told the people in the room, "Wow, I just realized that God doesn't give a damn about my personality." And I started weeping. It was sad, like saying goodbye, and then I felt this intense joy. These are moments that you give thanks for, then hurry up and write down, because you know it doesn't last forever. That's the value of a group. That's the value of friendship. Had she not asked me that question and had the courage to be objective...
How did people deal with a great mind like Mr. Rose's developing Alzheimer's?
Dealing with Alzheimer's really helps you develop compassion. I don't ever remember having felt like a compassionate person until I went through that, and I think you have to go through trauma to truly develop compassion.
What Richard's disease showed me was that there is an essence within us beyond this somatic mind. I see it now when I visit Richard in the nursing home. He can't speak very clearly, but every once in a while he drops a one-liner that proves to me that the wisdom is still accessible. The other day I was certain he said, "Just do what the Buddha says."
The people who have gone up there and visited him have all noticed that the essence of Richard Rose is still there. His physical mind and body are deteriorating just as they do with all of us, but there is something else that still remains. You sense this essence touching you and you touching it. Even the aides and the people who take care of him have remarked to me, "this is a different man, this man is unique," and I think it is a testimony to how we live our lives. He lived his life making himself a "vector," as he refers to it in his books—which basically means retreating from untruth, and living a dynamic existence based on a commitment to seek the Truth. So even though he's driven into the jaws of this disease, it hasn't destroyed his basic essence.
Do you think Mr. Rose's teachings are relevant to young people today?
Richard's message has just as strong of an appeal today as it did twenty years ago. He created a workable system that encourages doubt, and it appeals to the more scientifically oriented minds that young people seem to have today. Young people today are still asking the same basic questions, in particular "Who Am I?" but just from a slightly different perspective. "Zen" worked twenty years ago, but doesn't catch peoples' attention like it did back then. What seems to draw their attention are things that they can personally relate to. Richard's idea of "retreating from error," rather than attempting to go toward something, has that appeal.
My commitment has been to stay in communication with people, distribute Richard's writings and keep the newsletter and mailing list going. It's been a challenge, because when Richard got sick, when he developed the Alzheimer's, I figured this is what will separate the wheat from the chaff. There will be people who will drop out because the only reason they were here was Richard, and there will be other people who will hang around because of the friendships.
And as it turns out, of the past ten or fifteen years, these last two are when we've been most active. Recently, several members of the group have had profound spiritual experiences and, as a result, have given hope to everyone in the group that yes, we as individuals can have experiences just by being a group of peers. There's not this same reliance on a teacher as there was before. That's not to say that a teacher isn't important, because certainly one is, but as Richard says, a teacher will appear when needed. That's what is sort of happening here. These people in the group that have had these spiritual experiences have become teachers. We're finding that, even as peers, we can refer to each other and ask each other questions, almost as if it were a teacher/student relationship.
How do you see your future and the future of the TAT Society?
It's very important to continue this group work, because it's within these settings that the inspirations come. So my short lifetime goal is to continue the TAT work and keep the TAT foundation alive. Even if it's only three or four people meeting each year—fortunately it's a good number more—but if it does get down to that number, something good is still going to happen. We are there for each other; the friendship is there to keep things alive for each person.
It's part of the path. To see it as a sacrifice is an inaccuracy, because raising a child is a big spiritual task.
Women are really lucky. They can lose an ego fast by having a baby. It's almost like a death experience, because you have no idea if you'll come out of it alive. It's not for every woman. Raising a child is a matter of devotion and attentiveness. You become awake.
How has your relationship with art helped you along the spiritual path?
My artwork has been the beneficiary of the spiritual path, not the other way around. Richard helped me become a better artist. He emphasized the idea of beauty and intuition. The art world is usually a very jaded environment, so this was something new to me. I thought I understood beauty and had an intuition, but when I first started studying under Richard, he told me, "You have no intuition." An intuition is something that has to be developed.
Art is an illusory profession. On the other hand, my mind is more open to how the creative process really works, and rather than laying claim to being the creator, I realize my art is all part of the same manifesting mind. There's really nothing new under the sun.
I'm thankful to have a skill, and I'd like to be really good at it—like Bouguereau or Michelangelo. It takes a full time commitment; that's certainly true of anything, including spiritual work. Richard called it the Law of Proportional Returns.
One of the things you mentioned and I've seen in Mr. Rose's books is this idea of conservation of energy. Could you explain how that works?
The basic idea is so simple: that the energy we use to feed our appetites, especially the sexual appetite, can be put to better use. Richard said he wanted to make his body "a laboratory instead of a cesspool." People didn't like to hear that in the sixties and they don't like to hear it today—"You mean, I may have to actually change my lifestyle for this spirituality?"
But I think just about anyone with a grain of sanity will admit that a period of time away from the appetites will clear your thinking. Or you can try it and see for yourself. It is certainly good advice for one's children, and approaching them with the idea that conserving their sexual energy will develop or maintain their power is more appealing than shaming them into it.
Did Mr. Rose have a different spiritual system for women than for men?
There are different stages for women: The butterfly stage—when you are vivacious and full of life and looking for a man. Then you have the maternal stage, if she has a child, it's certainly a beautiful experience. Once you've raised your children, and they're always your children, your "debt to nature" so to say, and after menopause, she has more of a chance to operate on the spiritual/philosophical path with a clearer path. A woman doesn't have the natural biological pull occurring. Your spiritual teachers that are women are apt to be 50 and over.
When I came into the group, I was real headstrong.... Richard said, "You'd better change that attitude in a hurry." He emphasized being gracious. I never understood that word. He gave me a good understanding of that. That's important for a woman.
A woman's spiritual path is not the same approach as a man's. It's not this driving into it. The whole idea is for the woman to realize her feminine nature and nurture that. Intuition is the key. If you don't have that, you could spend years meditating and reading and standing on your head and that's the most useful tool there is. Intuition is just refined emotion. And women certainly have the jump on that.
Richard always stressed the importance of keeping track of your cycles. Because that's part of the woman's path. Women are spontaneous, they don't want to keep track of anything. Generally. But by keeping track of that, you start to see where some days you have a really clear intuition, and OTHER days, you have something entirely different going on. There are days more conducive to philosophic work. Men don't have to keep this type of track. They have a different approach. On the Farm the women would keep track of their cycles. Things would come up and Richard would say, "Well, what day is it?", and with all the women living under the same roof and being on the same cycle... well, it was humorous to me to see a man asking a woman what day of the month it was. It made for a more harmonious and more honest situation. He would say, "I know what's wrong with you. It's Day 10. That's what you've got your rear end up in the air and are flirting with all the men."
Richard didn't necessarily recommend the confrontational approach for women, although I've participated in it. Confrontation is a really male oriented thing. The women would get together and do their own style of confrontation. We sat in rapport one time, but had a confrontation meeting first. There were two married women in the group who were there to protect their husbands, two single women, and one woman who'd come to visit and sit in on the meeting. I was new. I'd come down with this attitude. Augie had gotten me pumped up to go down there and "Show ‘em." I think he just wanted to see a good catfight. I went down and figured confrontation is just to tell them what you think, "I think you're this, I think you're that." Meanwhile they were thinking, we'll get you. Richard tried to modify things a bit and I realized that my initial impression of confrontation is not the way you do it. But afterwards, the rest of the group took their little walks without me, so of course I thought they were stabbing me in the back.
We now have women's retreats. Started that this past year. A totally different atmosphere. Much more conducive to each sex when you separate them at some point. Nice to have generalized meetings but when you have your own, you can be a lot more open and honest about what's bothering you.