During the autumn of 1976, I first encountered Rose's teaching in a Los Angeles college on a poster in the Psychology Department. From the last line on it: "The Final Observer is One," I intuitively recognized that the person who wrote that "note in a bottle" to the rest of us drones in fantasyland had stepped outside our total realm into objective reality and Knew. I joined the local group, then went to the Farm for two weeks in the summer of 1977 to meet Rose and the others. After finishing the first half of graduate school in 1979, I moved to Pittsburgh and spent six years actively involved with the group in all aspects. In 1985, I moved back to California to finish the PhD program in Counseling Psychology. In part, I intended to make my career and identity a form of ladderwork. Another reason was that I knew I needed to totally immerse myself in Rose's teaching, work through every single aspect of it to the best of my understanding, and compile it into one comprehensive treatise, for my own benefit as much as for anyone else's. This manuscript was that dissertation. I hope it does service to Rose's genius and helps seekers clarify the path for themselves.
John Kent
August 2005