Teaching Resources

Interview with Alan Fitzpatrick on his Book The Sex Connection, A Study of Desire, Seduction and Compulsion based on the psychological teachings of Richard Rose.

Alan, you refer to this as the book that Mr. Rose always hoped to write but never got the opportunity to do so. Could you explain this?

There are two explanations, I think. One was the practical side – most everyone that came to see him, came to visit him, or came because they said they were interested in the philosophic message that he had, but in practical terms he worked with them on a psychological level. He always said a person is not going to make progress philosophically until they get their head on straight – until they have a whole mind, a mind that’s free from obsessions, things that are bugging them – that this has to be dealt with first. A person can’t leap frog over it until they take care of that. So that was one reason that he talked so much about practical psychology. The other reason was that when a person begins to work on themselves and if they use the Albigen System, which is a system of negating false things found in the self, it’s the same system applying to the same person whether they work on themselves psychologically or they are on a spiritual path. There’s no difference. It’s not that they put down one method and then pick up another, something different, and then say “gee, I’ve got my head on straight, now I can work on philosophy, where is that system.” No, it’s one in the same. It’s the same ways and means and he always knew that. He once said to a student that I remember, and this student was in psychological trauma – he said if you can ever get your head on straight using the Albigen System, you can take it further. First things first.

Why do think this information is so important to those seekers who follow a path of self-inquiry?

Well, first of all, someone who is troubled, knows they’re troubled. That doesn’t mean that they don’t have philosophic aspirations. Somebody who is troubled may still want peace of mind and mental clarity, but they also might want to know the answer to the big questions, “Who am I?” “Where have I come from?” “Where am I going?” I’ve met over the years so many people who aimed for the higher but are stuck in the lower. They haven’t solved the problems of the dichotomized mind. They haven’t solved the problems of something bugging them – they can’t get rid of it. Everyday you wake up you’re the same person, you have the same problems until you deal with them, until you heal the mind, until you get rid of these things, according to the Albigen System. By the way, Richard Rose said that the purpose of this system is not to learn how to live with these things that dichotomize the mind, the purpose is to get rid of them, is to cure. The second thing that is important is that there is no cure anywhere else. Psychologists and psychiatrists are at a loss over what causes mental troubles and mental illness. And they are certainly at odds when it comes to treatment. You have a million different things you could use from drug therapy to behavior therapy, some with some success, but look at what some of the psychologists and researchers have said – Thomas Szasz and the fellow that wrote “Psychological Society” – both said some people cure themselves at the same rate as people in therapy by doing nothing. So there’s no consensus in psychology, there’s none that can cure a person. There’s a lot of consensus about how to get them to learn to live with their problem, but getting them to learn to live with their problem is not curing it. And we see what happens when all the good, all the modern psychological work in the world, doesn’t help when somebody goes on a shooting spree. They say, oh maybe he went off his medication.

In light of that response, and in regards to recent events such as the tragedy at Virginia Tech, what is your perspective on the psychological/psychiatric analysis of the shooter, and what do you think Richard Rose might have offered as an analysis?

The clearest – and I followed all the experts from the President, George Bush, who said we can’t begin to understand why somebody does this, to several psychologists and psychiatrists who have been interviewed – and the clearest explanation that I’ve found is from a woman psychiatrist who said this individual was psychotic but not insane, was paranoid psychotic but not insane. Now we’re using their labels. If Richard Rose had looked at it I know what he would have said – he would have said there’s a sex connection involved here. This person is sick. They’ve gotten in this trouble, this deep psychological trouble, their mind is deeply troubled because of something connected to sex. And this person is possessed because of it. Now that’s a term that modern psychology refuses to consider because it’s old-fashioned, it’s out-dated, it’s everything that they’re not. It’s not the professional pose that they want to take. And yet they’ll come right on national television and tell you that they don’t know why -- they can tell you that they think somebody is psychotic but they don’t know why. They can’t explain why and they don’t know how this happens. Richard Rose would have said this happened because of a sexual incident that’s connected to the person’s mind and when that happened it put a mark upon them that only got worse.

If there was any one part of this teaching and your research of it that you think stands out as a key yardstick to spiritual work, can you elaborate on that?

A person can’t think if their mind is not clear. A person can’t think if they’re troubled. A person can’t think if they don’t have mental clarity and peace of mind. And I remember that many times Richard Rose would say that if a person’s going to approach a spiritual path they have to become as a little child, and he referred to the Bible, to Jesus saying, “To enter the Kingdom of Heaven, you must become as a little child.” What did Christ mean and what did Rose take from that and Rose said, look, the mind has to be clear. You’re not going to be able to think on the abstract, and perhaps paradoxically – you know we talked about this world being an illusion – the mind can’t focus on that when the mind is split and troubled. And so if you don’t have peace of mind in this life, just relative life, you don’t have anything. They say if you don’t have your health… if you don’t have your mind you don’t have anything. You can’t think and you can’t think of abstract things. Every moment of your waking time and subconscious will be dominated by what’s bothering you, so the whole point of this psychology that I’m writing about is how to remove these things. And see, he said – and here’s the similarity in the path – you don’t know where truth resides, you don’t know where mental clarity resides. All you can do is remove those things that are found to be untruth -- if you’re working on a spiritual path, egos, that sort of thing, that you remove. Or if you’re working on a psychological end – it’s the same system. You remove those things that are troubling the mind, just like you pull a splinter out of your thumb that’s infected and festering. You don’t learn to live with it. You don’t study it forever, you know, you have to get it out.

Just a couple of more questions here and these are along the lines of spiritual or philosophic questions but I think they can all be applied to the psychological. So, the first question would be “Are you your thoughts – who is thinking?” Followed by “Are you able to get out of or change a mood?” “What habits do I observe as being my biggest obstacle and can I trace them to a root source?” And last of all, “Do you think sex plays a role in affecting your moods and thinking?” Let’s take the last question first.

Mr. Rose was the first person I met and the only person I met who said, look, 95% of us is all about sex. And immediately people are going to say that’s wrong, that’s false, that can’t be. But that all our behavior, all our thinking is in some way, some subtle, some not so subtle, from how we put make-up on and we dress, the clothes we wear to look more attractive, and that all of this is related to sex. All the behavior has its root in a thinking component, and so a great deal of our thoughts, which we can observe, are related to sex, to sex acts we indulge in. This is why children, who are free of sex, are so different than us. They haven’t become us. Our whole thinking, our being, is now influenced by something else, which is sex and the sexual urge and reverie and these types of things.

So what would you say is your primary reason for writing this book? We see that it is to get out the psychological teaching of Richard Rose from his notes and lectures that you’ve compiled. But in summary, what would you say is the primary motive?

In this book you’re going to find the ten steps that he outlined on how a person can cure themselves, where no psychology, no drug therapy, no one else can. And sure, all his reasons for what’s causing a person trouble, which is the sex connection, which no psychologist wants to touch – they refuse to in these politically-correct times – to say thatsex has any connection whatsoever. Whereas he was saying that sex has everything to do with us. But that in this book are the ten steps and that if somebody picks up this book and they want to throw everything else out, if they can follow those ten steps, if they can understand what it is that is bugging them and remove it from their being, they’ll heal themselves. So it’s more than just this philosophy of the sex connection. It’s the ways and means for psychological cure. The book contains the success stories of people that were able to do that. And the people that met Rose who were not able to do that, didn’t because they didn’t deal with the sexual component. And guess what, to this day they’re still troubled by the sex acts that they’re indulging in. He said that there are unnatural and aberrant sex acts – that they’re not all the same as some politically-correct people want to say they are. He said that the things you do sexually can affect your mind. And some of it is irreversible -- once you put that mark on you you‘re in trouble. A person who is troubled knows they’re troubled. Rose said people who are possessed know they’re possessed and they’ll tell you they are possessed. They know there’s an entity.

Additional comments regarding Richard Rose and the sex connection:

First, the biggest deception people have about themselves, generally, is that they are in control and have free will. Rose talks about this on the Farmhouse Meeting DVD. He said that it is only in the "between-ness" state that we have free will. Otherwise we are not in control and most of what troubles us is rooted in sex. There is no "I" or "I want" in our desires. Reverie and thought forms are at the root of almost all of our moods, desires, thoughts and actions -- unless there is a physical disease or some such physiological source that can be directly pointed to as a cause. Our sexual/biological destiny carries over into what we think, feel and do. For example, in a mood of lust our thinking obviously changes. THIS IS WHY HE STRESSED THAT WE MUST BECOME AN OBSERVER even though we are attempting to observe the mind with the mind. But if we are ruthlessly honest with ourselves -- using others as a mirror because we often can't see our biggest obstacles, or we delude ourselves into rationalizing other causes -- we can observe and unravel the mystery to get at the source of our thought patterns and moods. In a moment of clarity (the value of confrontation being that it can bring us to that point) we may discover that these patterns and moods that are the result of trauma, ego, habit, false ideas and sexual habits are IMPOSED upon us. This is the REVERSE VECTOR in action -- we are unraveling or subtracting, not indulging in additive systems. We are OBSERVING DIRECTLY. But again, we usually need someone acting as a mirror to help us see this. Rose's Meditation booklet is very helpful in terms of learning to sit quietly with oneself and observe past traumas and humiliations without becoming emotional. He called it "Going Within." If you find yourself no longer being detached, then move on. A person cannot sit with these kinds of thoughts, however, if they are emotionally or sexually turbulent.