Saturday 8 October 2011
Saturday 24 September 2011
REMEMBER
Remember remember, remember, myself morning, evening and night,
remember, remember, remember myself, member I am alive! in breathing, heart beating, feeling and sensing, how could I have forgotten,
how much has been left behind?
I've travelled so far since that magical morning when essence was born, has he come such away?
I cannot remember, we,don't know the way to go home how far did we fall, we still hear the call to go back whence we came.
remember, remember, remember myself, member I am alive! in breathing, heart beating, feeling and sensing, how could I have forgotten,
how much has been left behind?
how much was entrusted to the mind?
my birthright spent in a foreign land, I long in my heart, so quietly to return to my father and repent.
my birthright spent in a foreign land, I long in my heart, so quietly to return to my father and repent.
I've travelled so far since that magical morning when essence was born, has he come such away?
I cannot remember, we,don't know the way to go home how far did we fall, we still hear the call to go back whence we came.
Tuesday 20 September 2011
FROM MYSTERY-a poem
like a breathing clock
the pendulum swings
next, last, next last next
although it cannot be seen,
only for a moment is the pendulum still,
yet the machine dreams on, next, last next, last, next.
the pendulum swings
next, last, next last next
although it cannot be seen,
only for a moment is the pendulum still,
yet the machine dreams on, next, last next, last, next.
the allowing the connection-a poem
or us there is only the connection,
as we are, alone,
as we are only something;
to touch in some way, reach out,
as we are, incomplete
as we are, alone,
as we are only something;
to touch in some way, reach out,
as we are, incomplete
Saturday 17 September 2011
RELATED LOVE- A POEM
Love is not ordinary,
it is magical, vibrant. like life,
as essential as breath or bread,
as marvellous as a flock of birds in flight,
or the sunrise.
planted in the essential, let us never take it for granted, in the ordinary run of things.
it comes from a greater love, from far above the ordinary.
let us never treat our lives as ordinary, flat,
life and love are far too extraordinary for that.
each breath comes and comes again as life,
as life lives its magic in the beating heart,
not small and ordinary but blended with the greater, as included in the higher love of which our love is part.
it is magical, vibrant. like life,
as essential as breath or bread,
as marvellous as a flock of birds in flight,
or the sunrise.
planted in the essential, let us never take it for granted, in the ordinary run of things.
it comes from a greater love, from far above the ordinary.
let us never treat our lives as ordinary, flat,
life and love are far too extraordinary for that.
each breath comes and comes again as life,
as life lives its magic in the beating heart,
not small and ordinary but blended with the greater, as included in the higher love of which our love is part.
Wednesday 7 September 2011
He says, “Be still, and know that I am God
, the heathen imagine that God is somewhere else, external to their own totality because they cannot be STILL.
the heathen are not outside-somewhere ELSE-my totality, either
I AM A COSMOS and all, the Megalocosmos, is in my totality, which is not little me, me, me.
if little me can be still IT can know, a tiny bit, that I AM- I HAVE ALWAYS BEEN.
I belong in the whole, oh JOY and GRATITUDE, my cup overfloweth.
the heathen are not outside-somewhere ELSE-my totality, either
I AM A COSMOS and all, the Megalocosmos, is in my totality, which is not little me, me, me.
if little me can be still IT can know, a tiny bit, that I AM- I HAVE ALWAYS BEEN.
I belong in the whole, oh JOY and GRATITUDE, my cup overfloweth.
WHO AM I?a stale tiresome formulatioand so worthles
my totality-what, exactly, is that?-MUST be very careful and cautious = aware of danger when the word I is used by who/what?
WHO IS USING IT-OR WHAT?
so there are clearly at least 3 elements: I, me, and my totality
which one is real or true? who or what does not know?
facts: all3 are contained within the body, who or what says MY body? WHO AM I? this is the heart of the matter.
each of the three says-oh so convincingly-and who or what is convinced?- I, each claims the right to use I, and, to complicate matters, even more, there is a mind a body and some feelings and even some emotions.
put them all in a flask and shake them up, and what is the result? there is life, surely, and sensation and feeling and emotion, also surely, but surely to who or what? who claims the crown and which is the REAL king?
I-who he/she
I just trips of the tongue without any attention and some part of my totality has be come habituated to using I as if it really was I, suggest to it that it may not be I, or even not even entitled to call itself I, and it-for it is a machine,and it becomes hostile and uneasy and sees any question of its right to use I-any doubt about that and it reacts as if attacked" I is/ am ME!" it screams and lies.
WRONG ME IS IT.- a thing and a reacting mechanism that sees all questioning it as an attack upon itself. it hates questions because it can hide in the certainty of answers. how DARE anyone doubt the validity of ME?I is strong and steady and intelligently asks questions since it senses that me is stifling it.I turns to the work/Truth as a compass needle turns to north.why would I have turned to the work had I not been discontent with my servitude to me/personality?-I sensed, clearly, that I needed help
by contrast me/personality sighs and yawns and says"oh I'm bored wit h all this just give me bread and circuses or I (note how it calls itself I- IT LIES) will have a tantrum and upset the totality" it does have that power does it not? -important question which will bore and irritate me/personality.
if I imagine I understand the ideas even at all, l I MUST QUESTION who/what is using I, that IS what is all about. already my questions are beginning to irritate and disturb your me/personality which will churn about trying to justify itself and blame peter.
justification and blame-both lies- are the hallmarks of me/personality. OF COURSE my questions are not useful to me/personality, they cast doubt on its right to use I. it's that simple. can you not sense me/personality shifting and wriggling on its throne while you read this? its FIRST REACTION-it can do nothing else, being of the lower, is to justify itself and blame peter, all the while using I.
the lower reacts the higher responds; justification/blame are only mechanical reactions but-without permission-they affect the totality.
reactions STEAL energy, responses bring finer/high energy and lift my totality and fill it with energy energy, the conditions and ingredients necessary for essence to grow up in to an individual.
poor un-evolved, half-grown innocent , slightly stupid, essence is so easily duped by me/personality, without the help of the real living work essence will inevitably be the dupe and slave of me/personality
WHO IS USING IT-OR WHAT?
so there are clearly at least 3 elements: I, me, and my totality
which one is real or true? who or what does not know?
facts: all3 are contained within the body, who or what says MY body? WHO AM I? this is the heart of the matter.
put them all in a flask and shake them up, and what is the result? there is life, surely, and sensation and feeling and emotion, also surely, but surely to who or what? who claims the crown and which is the REAL king?
I-who he/she
I just trips of the tongue without any attention and some part of my totality has be come habituated to using I as if it really was I, suggest to it that it may not be I, or even not even entitled to call itself I, and it-for it is a machine,and it becomes hostile and uneasy and sees any question of its right to use I-any doubt about that and it reacts as if attacked" I is/ am ME!" it screams and lies.
WRONG ME IS IT.- a thing and a reacting mechanism that sees all questioning it as an attack upon itself. it hates questions because it can hide in the certainty of answers. how DARE anyone doubt the validity of ME?I is strong and steady and intelligently asks questions since it senses that me is stifling it.I turns to the work/Truth as a compass needle turns to north.why would I have turned to the work had I not been discontent with my servitude to me/personality?-I sensed, clearly, that I needed help
by contrast me/personality sighs and yawns and says"oh I'm bored wit h all this just give me bread and circuses or I (note how it calls itself I- IT LIES) will have a tantrum and upset the totality" it does have that power does it not? -important question which will bore and irritate me/personality.
if I imagine I understand the ideas even at all, l I MUST QUESTION who/what is using I, that IS what is all about. already my questions are beginning to irritate and disturb your me/personality which will churn about trying to justify itself and blame peter.
justification and blame-both lies- are the hallmarks of me/personality. OF COURSE my questions are not useful to me/personality, they cast doubt on its right to use I. it's that simple. can you not sense me/personality shifting and wriggling on its throne while you read this? its FIRST REACTION-it can do nothing else, being of the lower, is to justify itself and blame peter, all the while using I.
reactions STEAL energy, responses bring finer/high energy and lift my totality and fill it with energy energy, the conditions and ingredients necessary for essence to grow up in to an individual.
poor un-evolved, half-grown innocent , slightly stupid, essence is so easily duped by me/personality, without the help of the real living work essence will inevitably be the dupe and slave of me/personality
Wednesday 31 August 2011
small time a poem/snapshot
Small time
Small time
Reading the newspapers
Counting the change
Taking up time they
Weren’t going to use anyway
Hooray for the small time
They dream plenty
Hope for a better day
Pockets always empty
Poor old, poor young,
Poor people always sing
The same old song
Tomorrow maybe
The sun will shine
Maybe make me warm.
Small time
Reading the newspapers
Counting the change
Taking up time they
Weren’t going to use anyway
Hooray for the small time
They dream plenty
Hope for a better day
Pockets always empty
Poor old, poor young,
Poor people always sing
The same old song
Tomorrow maybe
The sun will shine
Maybe make me warm.
Thursday 11 August 2011
Tuesday 9 August 2011
Sunday 7 August 2011
Tuesday 2 August 2011
We are the images of God.’FROM ALL AND EVERYTHING, Beelzebs tales to his grandson
“Now, my boy, I shall begin by repeating: all your favourites, even the contemporary, are—like us and like all
the other three-centred beings of our Megalocosmos—
such apparatuses for the Great cosmic Trogoautoegocrat
just as the Arterioscleroses were, from whom arose the
first ancestors of the now existing beings as well as the beings now existing everywhere. And through each of them
the cosmic substances arising in all seven Stopinders of
the Sacred Heptaparaparshinokh could be transformed,
and all of them, again even the contemporary, besides
serving as apparatuses for the Most Great cosmic Trogoautoegocrat, could have all possibilities for absorbing
from those cosmic substances which are transformed
through them what is corresponding for the coating and
for the perfecting in them of both higher-being-bodies;
because each three-brained being arisen on this planet of
yours represents in himself also, in all respects, just like
every three-brained being in all our Universe, an exact
similarity of the whole Megalocosmos.
“The difference between each of them and our common great Megalocosmos is only in scale.
“Here you should know that your contemporary favourites very often use a notion taken by them from some-
where, I do not know whether instinctively, emotionally,
or automatically, and expressed by them in the following
words: ‘We are the images of God.’
“These unfortunates do not even suspect that, of everything known to most of them concerning cosmic truths,
this expression of theirs is the only true one of them all.
“And indeed, each of them is the image of God, not of
that ‘God’ which they have in their bobtailed picturings,
but of the real God, by which word we sometimes still call
our common Megalocosmos.
“Each of them to the smallest detail is exactly similar,
but of course in miniature, to the whole of our Megalocosmos, and in each of them there are all of those separate functionings, which in our common Megalocosmos
actualize the cosmic harmonious Iraniranumange or ‘ex-
change of substances,’ maintaining the existence of every-
thing existing in the Megalocosmos as one whole.
“This same expression of theirs—’We are the images of
God’—can here serve us as a very good additional illustration in explanation of how far what is called ‘percepti-
ble logic,’ or, as it is sometimes still said, ‘Aimnophnian
mentation,’ is already distorted in them.
“Although this expression corresponding to the truth
exists there among them, yet concerning the consideration
of its exact sense, as in general concerning every short
verbal formulation, they at best always express with their
strange short-sighted mentation—even if they should
wish with their whole common presence actively and sincerely to reveal their inner representation and essential
understanding of this expression of theirs—something as
follows:
“‘Good ... if we are “images of God” . . . that means
. . . means . . . “God” is like us and has an appearance also
like us ... and that means, our “God” has the same moustache, beard, nose, as we have, and he dresses also as we
do. He dresses as we do, doubtless because like us he is
also very fond of modesty; it was not for nothing that he
expelled Adam and Eve from Paradise, only because they
lost their modesty and began to cover themselves with
clothes.’
“In certain of the beings there, particularly of recent
times, their being-Aimnophnian-mentation or perceptible
logic has already become such that they can very clearly
see this same ‘God’ of theirs in their picturings, almost
with a comb sticking out of his left vest pocket, with
which he sometimes combs his famous beard.
“Such a super peculiar being-Aimnophnian-mentation
about their ‘God’ proceeded in your favourites chiefly from
the Hasnamussian manifestations of those ‘learned’ beings
who, you remember, I have already told you, assembled in
the city of Babylon and collectively began to invent various maleficent fictions concerning their ‘God,’ which
were afterwards by chance widely spread everywhere on
that ill-fated planet. And in view of the fact that that period coincided with the time when the three-brained beings there began to exist particularly ‘Selzelnualno,’ i.e.,
particularly ‘passively,’ in the sense of the being-efforts
the other three-centred beings of our Megalocosmos—
such apparatuses for the Great cosmic Trogoautoegocrat
just as the Arterioscleroses were, from whom arose the
first ancestors of the now existing beings as well as the beings now existing everywhere. And through each of them
the cosmic substances arising in all seven Stopinders of
the Sacred Heptaparaparshinokh could be transformed,
and all of them, again even the contemporary, besides
serving as apparatuses for the Most Great cosmic Trogoautoegocrat, could have all possibilities for absorbing
from those cosmic substances which are transformed
through them what is corresponding for the coating and
for the perfecting in them of both higher-being-bodies;
because each three-brained being arisen on this planet of
yours represents in himself also, in all respects, just like
every three-brained being in all our Universe, an exact
similarity of the whole Megalocosmos.
“The difference between each of them and our common great Megalocosmos is only in scale.
“Here you should know that your contemporary favourites very often use a notion taken by them from some-
where, I do not know whether instinctively, emotionally,
or automatically, and expressed by them in the following
words: ‘We are the images of God.’
“These unfortunates do not even suspect that, of everything known to most of them concerning cosmic truths,
this expression of theirs is the only true one of them all.
“And indeed, each of them is the image of God, not of
that ‘God’ which they have in their bobtailed picturings,
but of the real God, by which word we sometimes still call
our common Megalocosmos.
“Each of them to the smallest detail is exactly similar,
but of course in miniature, to the whole of our Megalocosmos, and in each of them there are all of those separate functionings, which in our common Megalocosmos
actualize the cosmic harmonious Iraniranumange or ‘ex-
change of substances,’ maintaining the existence of every-
thing existing in the Megalocosmos as one whole.
“This same expression of theirs—’We are the images of
God’—can here serve us as a very good additional illustration in explanation of how far what is called ‘percepti-
ble logic,’ or, as it is sometimes still said, ‘Aimnophnian
mentation,’ is already distorted in them.
“Although this expression corresponding to the truth
exists there among them, yet concerning the consideration
of its exact sense, as in general concerning every short
verbal formulation, they at best always express with their
strange short-sighted mentation—even if they should
wish with their whole common presence actively and sincerely to reveal their inner representation and essential
understanding of this expression of theirs—something as
follows:
“‘Good ... if we are “images of God” . . . that means
. . . means . . . “God” is like us and has an appearance also
like us ... and that means, our “God” has the same moustache, beard, nose, as we have, and he dresses also as we
do. He dresses as we do, doubtless because like us he is
also very fond of modesty; it was not for nothing that he
expelled Adam and Eve from Paradise, only because they
lost their modesty and began to cover themselves with
clothes.’
“In certain of the beings there, particularly of recent
times, their being-Aimnophnian-mentation or perceptible
logic has already become such that they can very clearly
see this same ‘God’ of theirs in their picturings, almost
with a comb sticking out of his left vest pocket, with
which he sometimes combs his famous beard.
“Such a super peculiar being-Aimnophnian-mentation
about their ‘God’ proceeded in your favourites chiefly from
the Hasnamussian manifestations of those ‘learned’ beings
who, you remember, I have already told you, assembled in
the city of Babylon and collectively began to invent various maleficent fictions concerning their ‘God,’ which
were afterwards by chance widely spread everywhere on
that ill-fated planet. And in view of the fact that that period coincided with the time when the three-brained beings there began to exist particularly ‘Selzelnualno,’ i.e.,
particularly ‘passively,’ in the sense of the being-efforts
Sunday 31 July 2011
Friday 29 July 2011
Thursday 28 July 2011
human essence: from inside a question by Henriette Lannes
human essence
essence is our own. Personality is what is not our own.
The crux of our mystery is that blind conviction that any influence moving through our through thought, feeling, body, is our own.
Essence can be described as a knot of many possibilities of different orders – and as a range of tendencies. It is not the same thing. A lot of possibilities are the same for all: everybody can walk, swim, line, etc, etc, and, in principle, every human essence has been given the possibility to grow and evolve.
But not everybody has the same dexterity, nor the same bodily attitude. Nor can everyone become a good musician or a great painter – all go on to higher mathematics – become a very good position or a strong gang leader. Not all of us can experience very strong emotional attachment, or very strong hates.
These are very few examples, of course.
Essence is also every duty at different degrees in different centres. This is important. We could call it hunger for impressions in sensation, movement, feelings, intellect. What in me is the most hungry?
– This brings the question: how is essence, fed?
– What possibilities are developed?
– What tendencies are encouraged, or thwarted, or distorted?
Again we realise the immense difficulty of education, which the aim ought to be a preparation for the harmonious development of man.
We also know that essences like malleable wax, or even like a white sheet of paper on which everybody can write anything. It means that newborn essence has to be taken charge of – educated (with or without quotation marks).
Essence is created unique. It is the root of individuality, the seed of being. It could not be so, if it was not also 'Angel and Devil.'
human essence from inside a question by. Mme Lannes
human essence
essence is our own. Personality is what is not our own.
The crux of our mystery is that blind conviction that any influence moving through our through thought, feeling, body, is our own.
Essence can be described as a knot of many possibilities of different orders – and as a range of tendencies. It is not the same thing. A lot of possibilities are the same for all: everybody can walk, swim, line, etc, etc, and, in principle, every human essence has been given the possibility to grow and evolve.
But not everybody has the same dexterity, nor the same bodily attitude. Nor can everyone become a good musician or a great painter – all go on to higher mathematics – become a very good position or a strong gang leader. Not all of us can experience very strong emotional attachment, or very strong hates.
These are very few examples, of course.
Essence is also every duty at different degrees in different centres. This is important. We could call it hunger for impressions in sensation, movement, feelings, intellect. What in me is the most hungry?
– This brings the question: how is essence, fed?
– What possibilities are developed?
– What tendencies are encouraged, or thwarted, or distorted?
Again we realise the immense difficulty of education, which the aim ought to be a preparation for the harmonious development of man.
We also know that essence is like malleable wax, or even like a white sheet of paper on which everybody can write anything. It means that newborn essence has to be taken charge of – dedicated (with or without quotation marks).
Essence is creating unique. It is the root of individuality, the seed of being. It could not be so, if it was not also 'Angel and Devil.'
essence is our own. Personality is what is not our own.
The crux of our mystery is that blind conviction that any influence moving through our through thought, feeling, body, is our own.
Essence can be described as a knot of many possibilities of different orders – and as a range of tendencies. It is not the same thing. A lot of possibilities are the same for all: everybody can walk, swim, line, etc, etc, and, in principle, every human essence has been given the possibility to grow and evolve.
But not everybody has the same dexterity, nor the same bodily attitude. Nor can everyone become a good musician or a great painter – all go on to higher mathematics – become a very good position or a strong gang leader. Not all of us can experience very strong emotional attachment, or very strong hates.
These are very few examples, of course.
Essence is also every duty at different degrees in different centres. This is important. We could call it hunger for impressions in sensation, movement, feelings, intellect. What in me is the most hungry?
– This brings the question: how is essence, fed?
– What possibilities are developed?
– What tendencies are encouraged, or thwarted, or distorted?
Again we realise the immense difficulty of education, which the aim ought to be a preparation for the harmonious development of man.
We also know that essence is like malleable wax, or even like a white sheet of paper on which everybody can write anything. It means that newborn essence has to be taken charge of – dedicated (with or without quotation marks).
Essence is creating unique. It is the root of individuality, the seed of being. It could not be so, if it was not also 'Angel and Devil.'
Wednesday 27 July 2011
human essence from inside a question by. Mme Lannes
human essence
essence is our own. Personality is what is not our own.
The crux of our mystery is that blind conviction that any influence moving through our through thought, feeling, body, is our own.
Essence can be described as a knot of many possibilities of different orders – and as a range of tendencies. It is not the same thing. A lot of possibilities are the same for all: everybody can walk, swim, line, etc, etc, and, in principle, every human essence has been given the possibility to grow and evolve.
But not everybody has the same dexterity, nor the same bodily attitude. Nor can everyone become a good musician or a great painter – all go on to higher mathematics – become a very good position or a strong gang leader. Not all of us can experience very strong emotional attachment, or very strong hates.
These are very few examples, of course.
Essence is also every duty at different degrees in different centres. This is important. We could call it hunger for impressions in sensation, movement, feelings, intellect. What in me is the most hungry?
– This brings the question: how is essence, fed?
– What possibilities are developed?
– What tendencies are encouraged, or thwarted, or distorted?
Again we realise the immense difficulty of education, which the aim ought to be a preparation for the harmonious development of man.
We also know that essence is like malleable wax, or even like a white sheet of paper on which everybody can write anything. It means that newborn essence has to be taken charge of – educated (with or without quotation marks).
Essence is created unique. It is the root of individuality, the seed of being. It could not be so, if it was not also 'Angel and Devil.'
essence is our own. Personality is what is not our own.
The crux of our mystery is that blind conviction that any influence moving through our through thought, feeling, body, is our own.
Essence can be described as a knot of many possibilities of different orders – and as a range of tendencies. It is not the same thing. A lot of possibilities are the same for all: everybody can walk, swim, line, etc, etc, and, in principle, every human essence has been given the possibility to grow and evolve.
But not everybody has the same dexterity, nor the same bodily attitude. Nor can everyone become a good musician or a great painter – all go on to higher mathematics – become a very good position or a strong gang leader. Not all of us can experience very strong emotional attachment, or very strong hates.
These are very few examples, of course.
Essence is also every duty at different degrees in different centres. This is important. We could call it hunger for impressions in sensation, movement, feelings, intellect. What in me is the most hungry?
– This brings the question: how is essence, fed?
– What possibilities are developed?
– What tendencies are encouraged, or thwarted, or distorted?
Again we realise the immense difficulty of education, which the aim ought to be a preparation for the harmonious development of man.
We also know that essence is like malleable wax, or even like a white sheet of paper on which everybody can write anything. It means that newborn essence has to be taken charge of – educated (with or without quotation marks).
Essence is created unique. It is the root of individuality, the seed of being. It could not be so, if it was not also 'Angel and Devil.'
Friday 22 July 2011
Monday 18 July 2011
Sunday 17 July 2011
my own study
Around which of my centres or brains does my whole life rotate as if that brain or centre were my Sun? Into which one is all my attention and energy dragged almost as if by gravity?
I do not know, and I do not want any answers, nor do I want to pretend that it is something that I, or some fantastic part of me, an it, 'thinks' it 'should' be.
How can I approach my own question impartially (always assuming that I have the faintest idea what that means) and without an assumed answer, how can I find out for_a_fact? Can I find out?
How would I begin such a study? And how not to let it turn into an intellectual exercise or another form of talking to myself? I don't know how to, or what it would mean to, deepen my question.
Instinctively I sense that some part of me imagines that it already knows the what we call, and shy away from, answer.
I sense that I can learn more from asking the question than answering it – not that I remotely want to.
I do not know, and I do not want any answers, nor do I want to pretend that it is something that I, or some fantastic part of me, an it, 'thinks' it 'should' be.
How can I approach my own question impartially (always assuming that I have the faintest idea what that means) and without an assumed answer, how can I find out for_a_fact? Can I find out?
How would I begin such a study? And how not to let it turn into an intellectual exercise or another form of talking to myself? I don't know how to, or what it would mean to, deepen my question.
Instinctively I sense that some part of me imagines that it already knows the what we call, and shy away from, answer.
I sense that I can learn more from asking the question than answering it – not that I remotely want to.
from inside a question by Henriette Lannes
what I am searching for is not quite impossible
Only by coming back, experiencing, can I see that what I am searching for is not quite impossible. I may receive it. But very very often it does not come the way I expect it, because I don't know how to search. I don't know how to be, I don't know how to preferred being, the effort to be. To go towards that instead of where I go generally, to that level of things, the managing I am this or that, of dreaming, of sleep. And is a miracle that I have that strange transformation of energy in myself.
However, if I need it it can be proved to be given by some part of me that is sufficiently real. That part can show me it is that at any moment of my life, but sometimes it is more far out of reach them that tune or the Sun! Is there however, and I never lose courage. Little by little that strange situation becomes clearer. I know that I belong to the world of sleep, but I can be in a different relationship with it. I will not directly blanc belong there like a slave, I think, because I will acknowledge more and more my belonging to another order of things, of life, also in myself. I will acknowledge that, it will become for me the absolutely real. Then I begin to be on my way, not belonging entirely to where I have belonged since my early days. It is like opening to another dimension in my life, because fundamentally I AM – and I cannot realise it. When that terrible, empty wish to impress other people takes hold of a man completely it is finished for that man. All it does is to maintain that comedy that we call life. Our only hope is to be desperately sincere with ourselves – only that can save us. Do I see how all my intelligence is being used by demands imposed on mean by the ordinary world? It is a fantastic challenge, in very great thing if I can only persist. Persist and then I will not be swallowed up. I try not to believe too much in other people – they are puppets, just as important as I am. If I spend my life trying to impress them with intelligence, I will never succeed, they will only begrudge it to me!
I want to receive, but to receive I must be rooted in myself. I must be rooted in such a way that I received and are not taken. Mr Gurdjieff used to say "either eat or be eaten". Being on the radio, music, work in my job, a woman… I am eaten, I disappear. Or, to a certain extent I am firm, because my attention is firm. My attention on my wish at something firm. I go towards perfecting my attention, calling more to my wish. Then I can begin to receive a little. I don't go and llegedly with the first solicitation. The situation is reversed for a few seconds – it is not long, but it is real, I have felt it. Then it is a question of finding my way back to a moment so that it also may be real. I open myself to some experiment, live a little in a different way. I try
I am to people. One part can receive, and understand this work – for the rest work has no meaning. I am much more strange than I can imagine. A human being is a cosmos I made a solar energies. I have the energy of the sun in some part. I have an incredible potentiality. But what I call my life does not mean that it all and it attracts my attention.
How to get a better this or that – how to get on with other people in a way that is not difficult – being all the time with this or that thing! I forget I am alive, and one day my life will be taken from me. What does that mean? I have no idea.
These problems are the ones I can begin with. Life comes inside and outside, from the sun. Pardon me could approach these things, catch something of them by moments, but then they are buried like so many other things and I go on my ordinary way of living. If I persist, I may get access to that other part of myself more often. Then I will have to recognise for myself that I'm really two sided and for that and that for a long time the two sides are antagonistic.
Only by coming back, experiencing, can I see that what I am searching for is not quite impossible. I may receive it. But very very often it does not come the way I expect it, because I don't know how to search. I don't know how to be, I don't know how to preferred being, the effort to be. To go towards that instead of where I go generally, to that level of things, the managing I am this or that, of dreaming, of sleep. And is a miracle that I have that strange transformation of energy in myself.
However, if I need it it can be proved to be given by some part of me that is sufficiently real. That part can show me it is that at any moment of my life, but sometimes it is more far out of reach them that tune or the Sun! Is there however, and I never lose courage. Little by little that strange situation becomes clearer. I know that I belong to the world of sleep, but I can be in a different relationship with it. I will not directly blanc belong there like a slave, I think, because I will acknowledge more and more my belonging to another order of things, of life, also in myself. I will acknowledge that, it will become for me the absolutely real. Then I begin to be on my way, not belonging entirely to where I have belonged since my early days. It is like opening to another dimension in my life, because fundamentally I AM – and I cannot realise it. When that terrible, empty wish to impress other people takes hold of a man completely it is finished for that man. All it does is to maintain that comedy that we call life. Our only hope is to be desperately sincere with ourselves – only that can save us. Do I see how all my intelligence is being used by demands imposed on mean by the ordinary world? It is a fantastic challenge, in very great thing if I can only persist. Persist and then I will not be swallowed up. I try not to believe too much in other people – they are puppets, just as important as I am. If I spend my life trying to impress them with intelligence, I will never succeed, they will only begrudge it to me!
I want to receive, but to receive I must be rooted in myself. I must be rooted in such a way that I received and are not taken. Mr Gurdjieff used to say "either eat or be eaten". Being on the radio, music, work in my job, a woman… I am eaten, I disappear. Or, to a certain extent I am firm, because my attention is firm. My attention on my wish at something firm. I go towards perfecting my attention, calling more to my wish. Then I can begin to receive a little. I don't go and llegedly with the first solicitation. The situation is reversed for a few seconds – it is not long, but it is real, I have felt it. Then it is a question of finding my way back to a moment so that it also may be real. I open myself to some experiment, live a little in a different way. I try
I am to people. One part can receive, and understand this work – for the rest work has no meaning. I am much more strange than I can imagine. A human being is a cosmos I made a solar energies. I have the energy of the sun in some part. I have an incredible potentiality. But what I call my life does not mean that it all and it attracts my attention.
How to get a better this or that – how to get on with other people in a way that is not difficult – being all the time with this or that thing! I forget I am alive, and one day my life will be taken from me. What does that mean? I have no idea.
These problems are the ones I can begin with. Life comes inside and outside, from the sun. Pardon me could approach these things, catch something of them by moments, but then they are buried like so many other things and I go on my ordinary way of living. If I persist, I may get access to that other part of myself more often. Then I will have to recognise for myself that I'm really two sided and for that and that for a long time the two sides are antagonistic.
Saturday 9 July 2011
the story of the Buddha and the monkey
once upon a time, the Buddha was meditating under a tree when monkey came along, feeling very full of himself. He swaggered up to the Buddha and said "I the monkey and Lord of the universe" however, the Buddha said absolutely nothing.
Annoyed by the imperturbable silence of the Buddha monkey said, "I will prove it to you by jumping to the end of the universe"
The Buddha, however, maintained his imperturbable silence, so the monkey annoyed bunched himself up and jumped as high as he possibly could, up and up. He went for what seemed like forever.
Suddenly he landed with a thump in front of four great pillars. "Aha said monkey to himself. This must be the end of the universe", so monkey being a little vandal took out his pencil and scrawled at the bottom of one of these great pillars. "I the monkey am Lord of the universe". Having done this he bunched himself up and jumped up and up and up. Up and up and up he went and then down and down and down, until he landed with a slump in front of the Buddha, who was still meditating quietly."there, you see I have jumped to the end of the universe" said monkey and went on to say "I will prove it to you, because what I did was I wrote a special phrase right at the base of one of the pillars at the end of the universe." Again, the Buddha said nothing and continued his imperturbable meditation, except for one thing, opening his hand, he sent to monkey "look". The monkey looked intently at the right hand of the Buddha which the Buddha and open to him, he was not sure, but he thought he could see tiny writing at the base of one of the Buddha's fingers and he really had to screw his little eyes up to see what the writings said, looking very closely he could see that the writings said I the monkey am Lord of the universe.
Annoyed by the imperturbable silence of the Buddha monkey said, "I will prove it to you by jumping to the end of the universe"
The Buddha, however, maintained his imperturbable silence, so the monkey annoyed bunched himself up and jumped as high as he possibly could, up and up. He went for what seemed like forever.
Suddenly he landed with a thump in front of four great pillars. "Aha said monkey to himself. This must be the end of the universe", so monkey being a little vandal took out his pencil and scrawled at the bottom of one of these great pillars. "I the monkey am Lord of the universe". Having done this he bunched himself up and jumped up and up and up. Up and up and up he went and then down and down and down, until he landed with a slump in front of the Buddha, who was still meditating quietly."there, you see I have jumped to the end of the universe" said monkey and went on to say "I will prove it to you, because what I did was I wrote a special phrase right at the base of one of the pillars at the end of the universe." Again, the Buddha said nothing and continued his imperturbable meditation, except for one thing, opening his hand, he sent to monkey "look". The monkey looked intently at the right hand of the Buddha which the Buddha and open to him, he was not sure, but he thought he could see tiny writing at the base of one of the Buddha's fingers and he really had to screw his little eyes up to see what the writings said, looking very closely he could see that the writings said I the monkey am Lord of the universe.
truth is the most precious thing
Truth is the most precious thing; how to serve it in the right way? I attach importance to it, but there must not dream about it.
Each time it comes it must bring me back to effort. I tried to keep it simple, bringing the attention as much as I can back to myself, being concerned about here, now, not expecting it to give me any result.
Here – now – I myself – alive.
What is myself? Something which has always been there, lost in the thoughts, feelings, sensations, never realised as distinct – the essence 'I'.
Nothing in us is able to hold attention in the way it is needed, to really centre our attention, to keep it for ourselves, for a real pulling together of all the powers which have been given to us to be. But the incentive for trying again can become a little stronger if it corresponds to something we need. I have not got it but I need I know it.
We must not forget our infinite capacity for lying to ourselves. Inner sincerity is somewhat costly and takes a long time to acquire. I am more than one, that is what is so difficult to take; I am a collection of people who have different aims and wishes, and they hide from one another like antagonistic tenants in the same house. I cannot believe this until I have proved it to myself repeatedly. I am like a lunatic inside; I begin to question myself and I get no answer which could be constructive. I go to my own house but I am not received; I am a foreigner at home, the whole of my house is in the hands of foreigners.
But I know there is something fundamentally wrong. I try to wish that I am given a moment of a more real approach to my situation; I knew all my attention to that question. And in my life I may catch something if I am open to receive it.
The only thing I can do is to know something about myself, my reaction is; am I only that reaction? There is something in me which observes it, I must fight tried to feel myself there with that reaction. I have to be concerned, but in a different way and I need to find a place where this could be. This is the effort.
I tried to listen inside to discover my attention. I need attention of a quite different order, different kinds of attention to come together; mind attention, feeling, sensation. Then relaxation opens to a kind of field.
I am always the prisoner of my tensions and for a long time I can only let go limited amounts. But I can turn towards my wish, towards my search, towards the inside. I can come to a quieter experience of life – not as a turmoil thoughts and obligations, but to a relative silence in me. In this silence perhaps I can wish much further inside; I wish to see something of my reactions, of the way I live. I don't know how I live, living in sleep – do I live in sleep? Honestly I then know; I can only know from sure when I have had moments of real awakening.
The urge of a man is to turn ordinary life into a comfortable bed in which to sleep, an impulse we all share. We experience life like a sleeper in a bed full of prickles. We are people who are trying to accept the prickles as something fundamentally necessary, but we are awkward and mixed up in making use of them. The more we accept the prickles. The more sincerity we will obtain. But then the moment arises who is there to experience it?
Sensation is not an end, it is a means, a means to keep related with the inside of our life. Impressions never stop: if I were shut in the Coffin with enough at, I could live for some time because impressions come back as associations. If I am to be given self-knowledge, it will not be from observation, it will be because attention can be rooted inside. Then every kind of impression, including my own associations and feelings, will enable me to become relatively present from inside, not from the mind.
I have not to believe: I have to know I am absent from my life. Every time I am thinking of the teaching, without trying to have some experience of it, I am dreaming.
Man is much less than he believes and infinitely more. As a person he is nothing; in what is potential, is being is immense. But what is the use of saying that, do I believe it, as it make any sense?
I have to be did in myself. How do I spend each day of my life, what am I achieving that is really useful? I begin something and I go on for three hours. What has taken place? Then the next three hours? We can distinguish between outside, and inside time. Our hands engage in things which do not demand much thought and inside, on another line of time, I am dreaming. Or I maybe bored. This is like going on two different lines of time. Gradually I come to be able to use that inner time for something constructive and useful. "I'm sorry I have no time" – this is one of our biggest lies, mostly unconscious, most of the time we have no idea that we have more time. How do I use time and what is time? It has a certain duration but it has suddenly passed. It has no duration for us, it is something abstract which is gone. And then sometimes we try to kill it when it is killing us! Slowly perhaps, but surely.
We are in a very extraordinary position when we are able to hear ourselves from inside. I listen from a quite different place, taking great care not to interfere with the situation. I let it be. What I want is to have different impressions which I can distinguish. We grope in that unknown world and we receive information that is difficult to pacify in our ordinary files. We know something has a taste of something genuine, a taste of life. I receive it as a direct impact, a direct experience; I receive it from something different from my head. Then I do my best not to disturb it. I respect that state of things in me just now it will not last very long. I cannot do anything to lengthen it; I have to be as open as possible to receive it.
Inner friction brings in us, to a different kind of energy. We cannot create the conditions for that friction, but I may try to accept something that some part of me is reluctant to tackle, while another part has a different wish. I don't overcome the resistance with brutality, I experience it. Yes and no in me can create something new. Together, not in collision, an acceptance to bad both of them although they are antagonistic. Sometimes it may create in me that state where I can be there and know myself. It must always be treated with great respect and care. I cannot deal with that as I do, things in life.
Each time it comes it must bring me back to effort. I tried to keep it simple, bringing the attention as much as I can back to myself, being concerned about here, now, not expecting it to give me any result.
Here – now – I myself – alive.
What is myself? Something which has always been there, lost in the thoughts, feelings, sensations, never realised as distinct – the essence 'I'.
Nothing in us is able to hold attention in the way it is needed, to really centre our attention, to keep it for ourselves, for a real pulling together of all the powers which have been given to us to be. But the incentive for trying again can become a little stronger if it corresponds to something we need. I have not got it but I need I know it.
We must not forget our infinite capacity for lying to ourselves. Inner sincerity is somewhat costly and takes a long time to acquire. I am more than one, that is what is so difficult to take; I am a collection of people who have different aims and wishes, and they hide from one another like antagonistic tenants in the same house. I cannot believe this until I have proved it to myself repeatedly. I am like a lunatic inside; I begin to question myself and I get no answer which could be constructive. I go to my own house but I am not received; I am a foreigner at home, the whole of my house is in the hands of foreigners.
But I know there is something fundamentally wrong. I try to wish that I am given a moment of a more real approach to my situation; I knew all my attention to that question. And in my life I may catch something if I am open to receive it.
The only thing I can do is to know something about myself, my reaction is; am I only that reaction? There is something in me which observes it, I must fight tried to feel myself there with that reaction. I have to be concerned, but in a different way and I need to find a place where this could be. This is the effort.
I tried to listen inside to discover my attention. I need attention of a quite different order, different kinds of attention to come together; mind attention, feeling, sensation. Then relaxation opens to a kind of field.
I am always the prisoner of my tensions and for a long time I can only let go limited amounts. But I can turn towards my wish, towards my search, towards the inside. I can come to a quieter experience of life – not as a turmoil thoughts and obligations, but to a relative silence in me. In this silence perhaps I can wish much further inside; I wish to see something of my reactions, of the way I live. I don't know how I live, living in sleep – do I live in sleep? Honestly I then know; I can only know from sure when I have had moments of real awakening.
The urge of a man is to turn ordinary life into a comfortable bed in which to sleep, an impulse we all share. We experience life like a sleeper in a bed full of prickles. We are people who are trying to accept the prickles as something fundamentally necessary, but we are awkward and mixed up in making use of them. The more we accept the prickles. The more sincerity we will obtain. But then the moment arises who is there to experience it?
Sensation is not an end, it is a means, a means to keep related with the inside of our life. Impressions never stop: if I were shut in the Coffin with enough at, I could live for some time because impressions come back as associations. If I am to be given self-knowledge, it will not be from observation, it will be because attention can be rooted inside. Then every kind of impression, including my own associations and feelings, will enable me to become relatively present from inside, not from the mind.
I have not to believe: I have to know I am absent from my life. Every time I am thinking of the teaching, without trying to have some experience of it, I am dreaming.
Man is much less than he believes and infinitely more. As a person he is nothing; in what is potential, is being is immense. But what is the use of saying that, do I believe it, as it make any sense?
I have to be did in myself. How do I spend each day of my life, what am I achieving that is really useful? I begin something and I go on for three hours. What has taken place? Then the next three hours? We can distinguish between outside, and inside time. Our hands engage in things which do not demand much thought and inside, on another line of time, I am dreaming. Or I maybe bored. This is like going on two different lines of time. Gradually I come to be able to use that inner time for something constructive and useful. "I'm sorry I have no time" – this is one of our biggest lies, mostly unconscious, most of the time we have no idea that we have more time. How do I use time and what is time? It has a certain duration but it has suddenly passed. It has no duration for us, it is something abstract which is gone. And then sometimes we try to kill it when it is killing us! Slowly perhaps, but surely.
We are in a very extraordinary position when we are able to hear ourselves from inside. I listen from a quite different place, taking great care not to interfere with the situation. I let it be. What I want is to have different impressions which I can distinguish. We grope in that unknown world and we receive information that is difficult to pacify in our ordinary files. We know something has a taste of something genuine, a taste of life. I receive it as a direct impact, a direct experience; I receive it from something different from my head. Then I do my best not to disturb it. I respect that state of things in me just now it will not last very long. I cannot do anything to lengthen it; I have to be as open as possible to receive it.
Inner friction brings in us, to a different kind of energy. We cannot create the conditions for that friction, but I may try to accept something that some part of me is reluctant to tackle, while another part has a different wish. I don't overcome the resistance with brutality, I experience it. Yes and no in me can create something new. Together, not in collision, an acceptance to bad both of them although they are antagonistic. Sometimes it may create in me that state where I can be there and know myself. It must always be treated with great respect and care. I cannot deal with that as I do, things in life.
Henriette Lannes
Now, I wish to tell you that if you do not go deeper into attention, you will achieve neither your inside nor your outside aim. I had it from Mr Gurdjieff that in all we do we must have an inside and an outside name.
Something that we do in life without an inside aim will never sustain our work and the two names must help each other. I trust that our people to take that most seriously, to really try to bring in their ordinary work. Some relationship with what they try to be. If they achieve it, and I'm sure that something of quite a different order would be possible.
So wroteHenriette Lannes in her book, inside a question which is an invaluable and extremely practical aid to anyone trying to understand and practice the ideas of Mr Gurdjieff.
Something that we do in life without an inside aim will never sustain our work and the two names must help each other. I trust that our people to take that most seriously, to really try to bring in their ordinary work. Some relationship with what they try to be. If they achieve it, and I'm sure that something of quite a different order would be possible.
So wroteHenriette Lannes in her book, inside a question which is an invaluable and extremely practical aid to anyone trying to understand and practice the ideas of Mr Gurdjieff.
Saturday 9 April 2011
Tuesday 15 March 2011
Wednesday 2 March 2011
FAITH, HOPE, AND LOVE
Faith of consciousness is freedom
Faith of feeling is weakness
Faith of body is stupidity.
Love of consciousness evokes the same in response
Love of feeling evokes the opposite
Love of body depends only on type and polarity,
Hope of consciousness is strength
Hope of feeling is slavery
Hope of body is disease.
Faith of feeling is weakness
Faith of body is stupidity.
Love of consciousness evokes the same in response
Love of feeling evokes the opposite
Love of body depends only on type and polarity,
Hope of consciousness is strength
Hope of feeling is slavery
Hope of body is disease.
consciousness
from fragments, ch 8:
AT ONE of the following lectures G. returned to the question of
consciousness.
"Neither the psychical nor the physical functions of man can
be understood," he said, "unless the fact has been grasped that they can
both work in different states of consciousness.
"In all there are four states of consciousness possible for man" (he emphasized the word "man"), "But ordinary man, that is, man number one, number two, and number three, lives in the two lowest states of consciousness only. The two higher states of consciousness are inaccessible to him, and although he may have flashes of these states, he is unable to understand them and he judges them from the point of view of those states in which it is usual for him to be.
"The two usual, that is, the lowest, states of consciousness are first, sleep, in other words a passive state in which man spends a third and very often a half of his life. And second, the state in which men spend the other part of their lives, in which they walk the streets, write books, talk on lofty subjects, take part in politics, kill one another, which they regard as active and call 'clear consciousness' or the 'waking state of consciousness.' The term 'clear consciousness' or 'waking state of consciousness' seems to have been given in jest, especially when you realize what clear consciousness ought in reality to be and what the state in which man lives and acts really is.
"The third state of consciousness is self-remembering or self-consciousness or consciousness of one's being. It is usual to consider that we have this state of consciousness or that we can have it if we want it. Our science and philosophy have overlooked the fact that we do not possess this state of consciousness and that we cannot create it in ourselves by desire or decision alone.
"The fourth state of consciousness is called the objective state of consciousness In this state a man can see things as they are. Flashes of this state of consciousness also occur in man. In the religions of all nations there are indications of the possibility of a state of consciousness of this kind which is called 'enlightenment' and various other names but which cannot be described in words. But the only right way to objective consciousness.
AT ONE of the following lectures G. returned to the question of
consciousness.
"Neither the psychical nor the physical functions of man can
be understood," he said, "unless the fact has been grasped that they can
both work in different states of consciousness.
"In all there are four states of consciousness possible for man" (he emphasized the word "man"), "But ordinary man, that is, man number one, number two, and number three, lives in the two lowest states of consciousness only. The two higher states of consciousness are inaccessible to him, and although he may have flashes of these states, he is unable to understand them and he judges them from the point of view of those states in which it is usual for him to be.
"The two usual, that is, the lowest, states of consciousness are first, sleep, in other words a passive state in which man spends a third and very often a half of his life. And second, the state in which men spend the other part of their lives, in which they walk the streets, write books, talk on lofty subjects, take part in politics, kill one another, which they regard as active and call 'clear consciousness' or the 'waking state of consciousness.' The term 'clear consciousness' or 'waking state of consciousness' seems to have been given in jest, especially when you realize what clear consciousness ought in reality to be and what the state in which man lives and acts really is.
"The third state of consciousness is self-remembering or self-consciousness or consciousness of one's being. It is usual to consider that we have this state of consciousness or that we can have it if we want it. Our science and philosophy have overlooked the fact that we do not possess this state of consciousness and that we cannot create it in ourselves by desire or decision alone.
"The fourth state of consciousness is called the objective state of consciousness In this state a man can see things as they are. Flashes of this state of consciousness also occur in man. In the religions of all nations there are indications of the possibility of a state of consciousness of this kind which is called 'enlightenment' and various other names but which cannot be described in words. But the only right way to objective consciousness.
Monday 28 February 2011
MAN' POSITION
""There is an Eastern tale which speaks about a very rich magician who had a great many sheep. But at the same time this magician was very mean. He did not want to hire shepherds, nor did he want to erect a fence about the pasture where his sheep were grazing. The sheep consequently often wandered into the forest, fell into ravines, and so on, and above all they ran away, for they knew that the magician wanted their flesh and skins and this they did not like.
"At last the magician found a remedy. He hypnotized his sheep and suggested to them first of all that they were immortal and that no harm was being done to them when they were skinned, that, on the contrary, it would be very good for them and even pleasant; secondly he suggested that the magician was a good master who loved his flock so much that he was ready to do anything in the world for them; and in the third place he suggested to them that if anything at all were going to happen to them it was not going to happen just then, at any rate not that day, and therefore they had no need to think about it. Further the magician suggested to his sheep that they were not sheep at all; to some of them he suggested that they were lions, to others that they were eagles, to others that they were men, and to others that they were magicians.
"And after this all his cares and worries about the sheep came to an end. They never ran away again but quietly awaited the time when the magician would require their flesh and skins.
"This tale is a very good illustration of man's position."
"At last the magician found a remedy. He hypnotized his sheep and suggested to them first of all that they were immortal and that no harm was being done to them when they were skinned, that, on the contrary, it would be very good for them and even pleasant; secondly he suggested that the magician was a good master who loved his flock so much that he was ready to do anything in the world for them; and in the third place he suggested to them that if anything at all were going to happen to them it was not going to happen just then, at any rate not that day, and therefore they had no need to think about it. Further the magician suggested to his sheep that they were not sheep at all; to some of them he suggested that they were lions, to others that they were eagles, to others that they were men, and to others that they were magicians.
"And after this all his cares and worries about the sheep came to an end. They never ran away again but quietly awaited the time when the magician would require their flesh and skins.
"This tale is a very good illustration of man's position."
Sunday 27 February 2011
Friday 25 February 2011
Saturday 19 February 2011
The Book of Proverbs, Chapter 5
The Book of Proverbs, Chapter 5
6
Lest thou shouldest ponder the path of life, her ways are moveable, that thou canst not know them.
MADE IN THE IMAGE OF GOD
“Here you should know that your contemporary favorites
very often use a notion taken by them from somewhere,
I do not know whether instinctively, emotionally,
or automatically, and expressed by them in the following
words: ‘We are the images of God.’
“These unfortunates do not even suspect that, of everything
known to most of them concerning cosmic truths,
this expression of theirs is the only true one of them all.
“And indeed, each of them is the image of God, not of
that ‘God’ which they have in their bobtailed picturings,
but of the real God, by which word we sometimes still call
our common Megalocosmos.
“Each of them to the smallest detail is exactly similar,
but of course in miniature, to the whole of our Megalocosmos,
and in each of them there are all of those separate
functionings, which in our common Megalocosmos
actualize the cosmic harmonious Iraniranumange or ‘exchange
of substances,’ maintaining the existence of everything
existing in the Megalocosmos as one whole.
“I once told you that there is localized in the head of
each one of them as well as in us a concentration of corresponding
cosmic substances, all the functioning of
which exactly corresponds to all those functions and purposes
which our Most Most Holy Protocosmos has, and
fulfills, for the whole of the Megalocosmos.
“This localization, which is concentrated in their head,
they call the ‘head-brain.’ The separate, what are called
’Okaniaki’ or ‘protoplasts’ of this localization in their head,
or, as the terrestrial learned call them, the ‘cells-of-thehead-
brain,’ actualize for the whole presence of each of
THE HOLY PLANET “PURGATORY” 778
them exactly such a purpose as is fulfilled at the present
time by the ‘higher-perfected-bodies’ of three-brained beings
from the whole of our Great Universe, who have already
united themselves with the Most Most Holy Sun
Absolute or Protocosmos.
“When these higher parts of three-brained beings, who
are perfected to the corresponding gradation of objective
Reason, get there, they fulfill precisely that function of the
Okaniaki or ‘cells-of-the-head-brain,’ for which function,
as I have already said, our UNI-BEING COMMON FATHER
ENDLESSNESS condescended at the creation of the now existing
World, to decide to use for the future those coatings
who obtain independent Individuality in the
Tetartocosmoses, as an aid for Himself in the administration
of the enlarging world.
“Further, in each of them, in their what is called Vertebral
column,’ another concentration was localized,
called there the ‘spinal marrow,’ in which there are precisely
those what are called denying sources, which actualize
in their functionings in relation to the parts of the
head-brain just such fulfillments as the ‘second-order
newly arisen Suns’ of the Megalocosmos actualize in relation
to the Most Most Holy Protocosmos.
“It must without fail be noticed that in former epochs
there on your planet, your favorites knew something
about the separate particular functionings of the parts of
their spinal marrow and they even knew and adopted various
‘mechanical means’ for action upon corresponding
parts of this spinal marrow of theirs, during those periods
when some disharmony or other appeared in their, as they
express it, ‘psychic state’; but the information relating also
to this kind of knowledge gradually ‘evaporated’ and although
your contemporary favorites know that certain
particular concentrations are in this spinal marrow of
theirs, yet of course they have not the slightest notion for
THE HOLY PLANET “PURGATORY” 779
what function they were designed by Great Nature, and
in most cases simply name them ‘brain nodes’ of their
spinal marrow.
“Well, then, just these separate brain nodes of their
spinal marrow are the sources of denial in relation to the
separate shades of affirmation in their head-brain, precisely
as the separate ‘second-order-Suns’ are the sources of the
various shades of denial in relation to the various shades of
affirmation of the Most Most Holy Protocosmos.
“And, finally, just as in the Megalocosmos, all the results
obtained by the flow of the fundamental process of
the Sacred Heptaparaparshinokh from the ‘affirmation’ of
the Most Most Holy Protocosmos and from the various
shades of ‘denial’ of the newly created ‘Suns’ began to
serve thereafter as a ‘reconciling principle’ for everything
newly arising and already existing, so in them also, there
is a corresponding localization for the concentration of all
results obtained from the affirmation of the head-brain
and from all the shades of denial of the spinal marrow,
which results afterwards serve as a regularizing or reconciling
principle for the functionings of the whole common
presence of each of them.
“Concerning the place of concentration of this localization
which serves the common presences of terrestrial
three-brained beings as a regularizing or reconciling principle,
it must be noticed that in the beginning these threebrained
beings of the planet Earth who have taken your
fancy, also had this third concentration, similarly to us, in
the form of an independent brain localized in the region
of their what is called ‘breast.’
“But from the time when the process of their ordinary
being-existence began particularly sharply to change for
the worse, then Nature there, by certain causes flowing
from the common-cosmic Trogoautoegocratic process, was
compelled, without destroying the functioning itself of
THE HOLY PLANET “PURGATORY” 780
this brain of theirs, to change the system of its localization.
“That is to say, she gradually dispersed the localization
of this organ, which had had its concentration in one
place in them, into small localizations over the whole of
their common presence, but chiefly in the region of what
is called the ‘pit of the stomach.’ The totality of these
small localizations in this region they themselves at the
present time call the solar plexus or the ‘complex of the
nodes of the sympathetic nervous system.’
“And in those nervous nodes scattered over the whole of
the planetary body, there are accumulated at the present
time all the results obtained from the affirming and denying
manifestations of their head-brain and spinal marrow,
and these results, having become fixed in these ‘nervous
nodes’ scattered over the whole of their common presence,
are later also such a neutralizing principle, in the further
process of ‘affirmation and denial’ between the head-brain
and spinal marrow, just as the totality of everything arising
in the Megalocosmos is the neutralizing force in the
process of the affirmation of the Protocosmos and the various
shades of denials of all the newly arisen Suns
“Th
very often use a notion taken by them from somewhere,
I do not know whether instinctively, emotionally,
or automatically, and expressed by them in the following
words: ‘We are the images of God.’
“These unfortunates do not even suspect that, of everything
known to most of them concerning cosmic truths,
this expression of theirs is the only true one of them all.
“And indeed, each of them is the image of God, not of
that ‘God’ which they have in their bobtailed picturings,
but of the real God, by which word we sometimes still call
our common Megalocosmos.
“Each of them to the smallest detail is exactly similar,
but of course in miniature, to the whole of our Megalocosmos,
and in each of them there are all of those separate
functionings, which in our common Megalocosmos
actualize the cosmic harmonious Iraniranumange or ‘exchange
of substances,’ maintaining the existence of everything
existing in the Megalocosmos as one whole.
“I once told you that there is localized in the head of
each one of them as well as in us a concentration of corresponding
cosmic substances, all the functioning of
which exactly corresponds to all those functions and purposes
which our Most Most Holy Protocosmos has, and
fulfills, for the whole of the Megalocosmos.
“This localization, which is concentrated in their head,
they call the ‘head-brain.’ The separate, what are called
’Okaniaki’ or ‘protoplasts’ of this localization in their head,
or, as the terrestrial learned call them, the ‘cells-of-thehead-
brain,’ actualize for the whole presence of each of
THE HOLY PLANET “PURGATORY” 778
them exactly such a purpose as is fulfilled at the present
time by the ‘higher-perfected-bodies’ of three-brained beings
from the whole of our Great Universe, who have already
united themselves with the Most Most Holy Sun
Absolute or Protocosmos.
“When these higher parts of three-brained beings, who
are perfected to the corresponding gradation of objective
Reason, get there, they fulfill precisely that function of the
Okaniaki or ‘cells-of-the-head-brain,’ for which function,
as I have already said, our UNI-BEING COMMON FATHER
ENDLESSNESS condescended at the creation of the now existing
World, to decide to use for the future those coatings
who obtain independent Individuality in the
Tetartocosmoses, as an aid for Himself in the administration
of the enlarging world.
“Further, in each of them, in their what is called Vertebral
column,’ another concentration was localized,
called there the ‘spinal marrow,’ in which there are precisely
those what are called denying sources, which actualize
in their functionings in relation to the parts of the
head-brain just such fulfillments as the ‘second-order
newly arisen Suns’ of the Megalocosmos actualize in relation
to the Most Most Holy Protocosmos.
“It must without fail be noticed that in former epochs
there on your planet, your favorites knew something
about the separate particular functionings of the parts of
their spinal marrow and they even knew and adopted various
‘mechanical means’ for action upon corresponding
parts of this spinal marrow of theirs, during those periods
when some disharmony or other appeared in their, as they
express it, ‘psychic state’; but the information relating also
to this kind of knowledge gradually ‘evaporated’ and although
your contemporary favorites know that certain
particular concentrations are in this spinal marrow of
theirs, yet of course they have not the slightest notion for
THE HOLY PLANET “PURGATORY” 779
what function they were designed by Great Nature, and
in most cases simply name them ‘brain nodes’ of their
spinal marrow.
“Well, then, just these separate brain nodes of their
spinal marrow are the sources of denial in relation to the
separate shades of affirmation in their head-brain, precisely
as the separate ‘second-order-Suns’ are the sources of the
various shades of denial in relation to the various shades of
affirmation of the Most Most Holy Protocosmos.
“And, finally, just as in the Megalocosmos, all the results
obtained by the flow of the fundamental process of
the Sacred Heptaparaparshinokh from the ‘affirmation’ of
the Most Most Holy Protocosmos and from the various
shades of ‘denial’ of the newly created ‘Suns’ began to
serve thereafter as a ‘reconciling principle’ for everything
newly arising and already existing, so in them also, there
is a corresponding localization for the concentration of all
results obtained from the affirmation of the head-brain
and from all the shades of denial of the spinal marrow,
which results afterwards serve as a regularizing or reconciling
principle for the functionings of the whole common
presence of each of them.
“Concerning the place of concentration of this localization
which serves the common presences of terrestrial
three-brained beings as a regularizing or reconciling principle,
it must be noticed that in the beginning these threebrained
beings of the planet Earth who have taken your
fancy, also had this third concentration, similarly to us, in
the form of an independent brain localized in the region
of their what is called ‘breast.’
“But from the time when the process of their ordinary
being-existence began particularly sharply to change for
the worse, then Nature there, by certain causes flowing
from the common-cosmic Trogoautoegocratic process, was
compelled, without destroying the functioning itself of
THE HOLY PLANET “PURGATORY” 780
this brain of theirs, to change the system of its localization.
“That is to say, she gradually dispersed the localization
of this organ, which had had its concentration in one
place in them, into small localizations over the whole of
their common presence, but chiefly in the region of what
is called the ‘pit of the stomach.’ The totality of these
small localizations in this region they themselves at the
present time call the solar plexus or the ‘complex of the
nodes of the sympathetic nervous system.’
“And in those nervous nodes scattered over the whole of
the planetary body, there are accumulated at the present
time all the results obtained from the affirming and denying
manifestations of their head-brain and spinal marrow,
and these results, having become fixed in these ‘nervous
nodes’ scattered over the whole of their common presence,
are later also such a neutralizing principle, in the further
process of ‘affirmation and denial’ between the head-brain
and spinal marrow, just as the totality of everything arising
in the Megalocosmos is the neutralizing force in the
process of the affirmation of the Protocosmos and the various
shades of denials of all the newly arisen Suns
“Th
3SOURCES OF ASSOCIATIONS
there flow
simultaneously in man three kinds of associations—of thought, of feeling and of
mechanical instinct. Most important of all is that not only do the three kinds of independent
associations flow simultaneously, but also there participate in all of them the results of the
three sources found in man for the transformation of the three natures of so-called "cosmic
vivifyingness." These sources are located in man as follows: the first, in a
part of the brain, the second, in a part of the spinal column; and the third, in a part of the
solar plexus. These three kinds of associations in one man explain that peculiar sensation,
noticed at times by everyone, as though there were several beings living in him. Those
who wish to acquaint themselves more fully with these questions are advised to learn, that
is, not simply to read but to immerse themselves in, that chapter of the first series of my
writings entitled "The Holy Planet Purgatory." On reading over what has just been written,
there involuntarily arises in me the question as to which must appear to the reader more
fantastic: that which I myself have written, or the hypothesis of our distant ancestors which
I have cited. It seems to me that every reader on first comparing them will find the one as
bad as the other. A little later he will blame only me, that I, in spite of living in this period of
civilization, should write such nonsense. He will forgive the ancestors, however, as he is
able to put himself into their position, and with the reason proper to him will argue
approximately thus: "How were they to blame that in their time our civilization had not yet
existed? And once having become learned, they too had to occupy themselves with
something. And for a fact, at that time, not one electrical machine existed, even of the
simplest sort." Not having been able to restrain myself, and once again having bared one
of my weaknesses, consisting in, as is said, "cracking a joke" at the most serious
moments of my writings, I wish to take advantage of this incidental digression from the
basic theme to describe a very peculiar coincidence
which took place a few days ago, in connection with the writing of this last book of mine. In
connection with the writing of this book there have been, altogether, many coincidences,
seemingly very strange at first glance, but which on closer scrutiny have shown
themselves to be according to law. Of course I shall not write about all these coincidences,
as this would not be possible—I would probably have to write ten other books. However,
for a better characterization of these strange coincidences and the consequences which
have arisen from them, hindering the exposition of this book, I will depict, aside from the
just mentioned one which happened the day before yesterday, also the first, which took
place on November 6th, 1934, the first day of the recommencement of my writing. As I
have already said in the prologue, I decided, after a year's interruption in my writings, to
begin to write again on the 6th of November, that is, on that very day on which, seven
years before, I had decided once and for all to achieve without fail all the tasks required
for my being. On this day, happening to be in New York, I went early in the morning to the
Childs cafe situated at Columbus Circle, to which I went every morning for my writing. My
American acquaintances, by the way, call this Childs among themselves Café de la Paix,
because this cafe here in America has served me during the entire period of my writing
activity in the same way as the Parisian Café de la Paix. That morning I felt like a
"mettlesome horse" let loose after having been confined for many months in the stable.
Thoughts were "swarming" in me, chiefly those thoughts pertaining to the work.
Work went so well that by nine o'clock I had succeeded in writing about fifteen pages of
my notebook without a single correction. I probably succeeded so well because, although I
should not have allowed any active mentation to proceed in me, I must nevertheless
confess that during the last month I had not made much effort, and consequently had
considered, involuntarily and half automatically, how to begin this book, which will be not
only the last but also the "collected concluding" of all my w
simultaneously in man three kinds of associations—of thought, of feeling and of
mechanical instinct. Most important of all is that not only do the three kinds of independent
associations flow simultaneously, but also there participate in all of them the results of the
three sources found in man for the transformation of the three natures of so-called "cosmic
vivifyingness." These sources are located in man as follows: the first, in a
part of the brain, the second, in a part of the spinal column; and the third, in a part of the
solar plexus. These three kinds of associations in one man explain that peculiar sensation,
noticed at times by everyone, as though there were several beings living in him. Those
who wish to acquaint themselves more fully with these questions are advised to learn, that
is, not simply to read but to immerse themselves in, that chapter of the first series of my
writings entitled "The Holy Planet Purgatory." On reading over what has just been written,
there involuntarily arises in me the question as to which must appear to the reader more
fantastic: that which I myself have written, or the hypothesis of our distant ancestors which
I have cited. It seems to me that every reader on first comparing them will find the one as
bad as the other. A little later he will blame only me, that I, in spite of living in this period of
civilization, should write such nonsense. He will forgive the ancestors, however, as he is
able to put himself into their position, and with the reason proper to him will argue
approximately thus: "How were they to blame that in their time our civilization had not yet
existed? And once having become learned, they too had to occupy themselves with
something. And for a fact, at that time, not one electrical machine existed, even of the
simplest sort." Not having been able to restrain myself, and once again having bared one
of my weaknesses, consisting in, as is said, "cracking a joke" at the most serious
moments of my writings, I wish to take advantage of this incidental digression from the
basic theme to describe a very peculiar coincidence
which took place a few days ago, in connection with the writing of this last book of mine. In
connection with the writing of this book there have been, altogether, many coincidences,
seemingly very strange at first glance, but which on closer scrutiny have shown
themselves to be according to law. Of course I shall not write about all these coincidences,
as this would not be possible—I would probably have to write ten other books. However,
for a better characterization of these strange coincidences and the consequences which
have arisen from them, hindering the exposition of this book, I will depict, aside from the
just mentioned one which happened the day before yesterday, also the first, which took
place on November 6th, 1934, the first day of the recommencement of my writing. As I
have already said in the prologue, I decided, after a year's interruption in my writings, to
begin to write again on the 6th of November, that is, on that very day on which, seven
years before, I had decided once and for all to achieve without fail all the tasks required
for my being. On this day, happening to be in New York, I went early in the morning to the
Childs cafe situated at Columbus Circle, to which I went every morning for my writing. My
American acquaintances, by the way, call this Childs among themselves Café de la Paix,
because this cafe here in America has served me during the entire period of my writing
activity in the same way as the Parisian Café de la Paix. That morning I felt like a
"mettlesome horse" let loose after having been confined for many months in the stable.
Thoughts were "swarming" in me, chiefly those thoughts pertaining to the work.
Work went so well that by nine o'clock I had succeeded in writing about fifteen pages of
my notebook without a single correction. I probably succeeded so well because, although I
should not have allowed any active mentation to proceed in me, I must nevertheless
confess that during the last month I had not made much effort, and consequently had
considered, involuntarily and half automatically, how to begin this book, which will be not
only the last but also the "collected concluding" of all my w
The Book of Matthew, Chapter 16
The Book of Matthew, Chapter 16
Holy-Affirming,,
Holy-Denying,
Holy-Reconciling,
Transubstantiate in me
For my Being.’
or
‘Holy God,
Holy Firm,
Holy Immortal,
Have mercy on us.’
“
18
And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.
Holy-Affirming,,
Holy-Denying,
Holy-Reconciling,
Transubstantiate in me
For my Being.’
or
‘Holy God,
Holy Firm,
Holy Immortal,
Have mercy on us.’
“
3 FORCES
Holy-Affirming,,
Holy-Denying,
Holy-Reconciling,
Transubstantiate in me
For my Being.’
or
‘Holy God,
Holy Firm,
Holy Immortal,
Have mercy on us.’
“
Holy-Denying,
Holy-Reconciling,
Transubstantiate in me
For my Being.’
or
‘Holy God,
Holy Firm,
Holy Immortal,
Have mercy on us.’
“
Friday 18 February 2011
Wednesday 16 February 2011
East Coker
East Coker: "
here is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.
here is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.
here is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.
here is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.
Monday 14 February 2011
The Book of 1 Corinthians, Chapter 13
The Book of 1 Corinthians, Chapter 13
When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. | |
12 | For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. |
13 | And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity. |
The Book of 1 Kings, Chapter 19
The Book of 1 Kings, Chapter 19
nd he said, Go forth, and stand upon the mount before the LORD. And, behold, the LORD passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the LORD; but the LORD was not in the wind: and after the wind an earthquake; but the LORD was not in the earthquake:
12
And after the earthquake a fire; but the LORD was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice.
nd he said, Go forth, and stand upon the mount before the LORD. And, behold, the LORD passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the LORD; but the LORD was not in the wind: and after the wind an earthquake; but the LORD was not in the earthquake:
12
And after the earthquake a fire; but the LORD was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice.
Tuesday 8 February 2011
Friday 4 February 2011
YouTube - Dear Lord and Father of Mankind
YouTube - Dear Lord and Father of Mankind: "- Sent using Google Toolbar"
Wednesday 2 February 2011
Monday 31 January 2011
from mystery
like a breathing clock
the pendulum swings
next, last, next, last, next.
although it cannot be seen
only for a moment is the pendulum still
yet the machine dreams, next, last, next, last, next.
Sunday 30 January 2011
wind in the trees
there is always the wind in the trees and the next moment,
and the space between.
it is always reconsidered,
and the change explained.
always this and this,
and the space between.
and the space between.
it is always reconsidered,
and the change explained.
always this and this,
and the space between.
Thursday 27 January 2011
JUST SO
so, my heartbeat
so, my breathing,
so, the cigarette smoke spirals up towards the ceiling
outside my window,London, bathed in orange from the street lamps' glow
faintly roaring
never
quite
asleep
so, my breathing,
so, the cigarette smoke spirals up towards the ceiling
outside my window,London, bathed in orange from the street lamps' glow
faintly roaring
never
quite
asleep
talking
this precious piece of work on talking or i would say, making formulations, was made by Mrs. Staveley.
_________________________________________________________________________________________
"Let us think today about talking - inner and outer talking - and the
harm we do ourselves and others by this mechanical process.
We have an experience and immediately feel the urge to burst
into speech, to translate it into words, to try it out, as it were, on
others.
We have done this so much in the past that we no longer believe in our
experience unless we put it into words. It is not real to us unless we hear
ourselves. Isn't it very strange when you think about it? Surely the reality is in the experience and not in the words I dress it in which inevitably limit and contain it. And yet we believe in words. It is almost a compulsion to talk. With some it amounts to disease. We can see, or
rather hear this in others, but do we hear in in ourselves?
I have an experience. It is mine, unique to me. If I put it into words
I externalize it, limit it, even distort it. My experience is no longer
mine. It is a newspaper or textbook account of itself.
Try to see this: How much is lost, how much is changed, so that I no
longer live my own life but a newspaper account of it. It is dull,
banal, stereotyped.
In Ecclesiastes it is said: "There is a time to speak and a time to remain
silent." Do we know this? Can we sense it? Even when we remain silent
outwardly the talking machine is racing ahead inwardly so there is no
room for a new impression to enter. The work tells us to practice inward
silence even more than outer. Do we try to do this? Do we even know
where to begin? Perhaps not yet. We have to begin with outer talking.
It is very well known that it is less difficult to remain silent
altogether than it is to refrain from speaking about one particular thing. Is there something you very much wish to speak about with others? Try to catch the moment when you fail, when you forget - the sensation of indulging a weakness, the self-justification that follows, the turning aside from any flicker of conscience. Or perhaps by some accident you are able to refrain from outer talking; then watch the rush of words in your inner world. Make the effort to stop, to avert your inner attention to something else. Almost always when one can do this there is an accession of strength. My not speaking (inside or outside) strengthens me; or rather, I keep my strength for myself. I can sense that the compulsion to talk weakens me. Try to do this. It is a very important part of the work."
___________________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________________
"Let us think today about talking - inner and outer talking - and the
harm we do ourselves and others by this mechanical process.
We have an experience and immediately feel the urge to burst
into speech, to translate it into words, to try it out, as it were, on
others.
We have done this so much in the past that we no longer believe in our
experience unless we put it into words. It is not real to us unless we hear
ourselves. Isn't it very strange when you think about it? Surely the reality is in the experience and not in the words I dress it in which inevitably limit and contain it. And yet we believe in words. It is almost a compulsion to talk. With some it amounts to disease. We can see, or
rather hear this in others, but do we hear in in ourselves?
I have an experience. It is mine, unique to me. If I put it into words
I externalize it, limit it, even distort it. My experience is no longer
mine. It is a newspaper or textbook account of itself.
Try to see this: How much is lost, how much is changed, so that I no
longer live my own life but a newspaper account of it. It is dull,
banal, stereotyped.
In Ecclesiastes it is said: "There is a time to speak and a time to remain
silent." Do we know this? Can we sense it? Even when we remain silent
outwardly the talking machine is racing ahead inwardly so there is no
room for a new impression to enter. The work tells us to practice inward
silence even more than outer. Do we try to do this? Do we even know
where to begin? Perhaps not yet. We have to begin with outer talking.
It is very well known that it is less difficult to remain silent
altogether than it is to refrain from speaking about one particular thing. Is there something you very much wish to speak about with others? Try to catch the moment when you fail, when you forget - the sensation of indulging a weakness, the self-justification that follows, the turning aside from any flicker of conscience. Or perhaps by some accident you are able to refrain from outer talking; then watch the rush of words in your inner world. Make the effort to stop, to avert your inner attention to something else. Almost always when one can do this there is an accession of strength. My not speaking (inside or outside) strengthens me; or rather, I keep my strength for myself. I can sense that the compulsion to talk weakens me. Try to do this. It is a very important part of the work."
___________________________________________________________________________________________
Saturday 22 January 2011
FROM ANTIQUITY
"From Antiquity: A grateful tribute from a pupil of G.I.Gurdjieff"
Basil Tilley
Chapter 1: 'Know Thyself'
Who is this who is forever looking over my shoulder? He uses such words as perhaps, should, should not, can or cannot.
Sometimes he disapproves and sometimes he admires. What is he at, what are his standards? Of course he goes away from time to time and I am happy to get on with what I wish to do, but sooner or later he returns to have a look at what is going on. But also he can be very helpful as, for instance, when I am in a state of imagination about money, sex, or even my own death. At such a moment he can remind me that none of these things I anticipate are happening at this moment. This is a great relief: I had not really seen that! Usually I am only dimly aware that he is there at all: it is a kind of twilight in which my life takes place impinging on my consciousness.
But who is he? Although he appears to be the same person who gives or withholds his approval, his standards of behaviour vary over a wide range. What he wishes to convince me of today, he will pay no attention to tomorrow, and suggests some quite other way of quietening myself from my usual hurry and rush. I even begin to see that we change places - sometimes I am he and sometimes he is me, and in any case who am I? This twilight situation persists, I am only dimly aware that I am not one.
Surely I can't be the only one who has such a situation? Is it perhaps the way "man" is constructed? I look around and see a certain evidence that such phrases as 'I couldn't make up my mind' or 'what would you have done?' cause me to suppose that the state of affairs in myself may be the general state for all us humans. The mass media is providing a wonderful stage to highlight this, peace-keeping forces, political manifestos, racial equality, and so on, and so on, and so on. It begins to be more clear that we are all made up of two opposites - yes or no, for or against, black or white.
Still I am only dimly aware of this and I see that each of us and each nation, indeed every human unit of people, plans and acts as if he were one or a unity. Disagreement is not seen to be inevitable. This is in the routine of things as they are, but there are more serious aspects to consider about this man who looks over my shoulder. He is by no means demanding when it should be necessary to be so, and consequently a good deal of 'getting by' takes place. Indeed he does not insist, in the usual way, that I should look very carefully at my achievements, he allows me to think that I know best. However, there are occasions, as in the case of extreme danger, or sadness, or love, when both he and I disappear; we just have no place.
This is a very strange thing to discover: is there a third person who only appears at moments of great emotion, and also watches what is going on between myself and the one who is looking over my shoulder?
All of us have during our lives strange experiences when we seem to be out of our usual place and time. We go into a room and suddenly everything is still, and, although I may never have been in that room before, I feel that it is familiar to me. Or I have a moment of great emotion and of great intensity which is inexplicable, but which also takes me out of place and time. At such moments am I still the usual person together with the one looking over my shoulder? What makes these moments so alive is that the other two have gone away, I know not where. Or I have gone away, I know not where, and who am I?
So could there be a third participant in my life? In fact all the traditions tell of this possibility. Read the Koran, the Upanishads, the Greeks, the Bible. But you will realize nothing unless you are fortunate to have the key which has been brought through all the ages and offered to man, and which at the present time is offered by Gurdjieff. He puts it plainly in words: we do not remember ourselves. So why do we go on living in the twilight? That is the riddle to be solved - the ko-an as it is called in Zen.
Chapter 2: The Nature of Influences
History shows that all times there has been a struggle for power. This has been on various scales, from huge movements of races, like the Goths, to much smaller struggles between rulers and their more powerful subjects. The modern possibility to have immediate news by radio from all over the world highlights this unceasing struggle. War and peace are seen to be relative conditions and relative in their content.
At the side of this power struggle there is another activity, sometimes involving larger bodies of men and sometimes only individuals. The surface of the earth is littered with the ruins of former constructions of an artistic and religious interpretation such as those in Peru, in Indochina, in Egypt or Greece, which show great skill as well as manifesting something of a special order through what we call beauty. These, too, have had their rise and fall - their time for construction and their time for decay.
Whole nations and races become involved in a struggle for power - often the victims of the ambition of a single man. In the case of the temples and the works of art, the involvement is of a quite different order, but however humble the contributor, he cannot be described as a victim.
There is a third and almost hidden activity which threads through history, and that is the restatement of ancient truths. Buddhism, Christianity, to name but two, originated with a leader assisted by a handful of devoted followers, but as time went on the influence spread, so that large sections of humanity responded to it and a new religion came into being. It can be seen that the periods of the struggle for power are comparatively short-lived compared with the hundreds of years over which a religion spreads its influence. In between there are varying lengths of time during which the centers of culture hold sway. But it is clear that all three have different characteristics and causation and also different requirements. Threading through these three lines have been three dominating ideas. In the first is the idea of race or nation, in the second the idea of beauty, and in the third the idea of Truth. The idea of race remains a constant, only depending on whose race - mine or the enemies. The idea of beauty is more relative and is fundamental to the laws of proportion and scale. But the idea of Truth - ah! Here is a question! Since ancient times conflict has arisen in this sphere and believers and unbelievers remain locked in the struggle for supremacy. In fact Truth is above the level of humanity and remains what it is, whatever the formulation. The desire to possess it and to use it for personal aggrandizement results in holy wars and the inquisition. Instinctively, Truth is felt to be unquestionable: in fact true. And then we try to interpret it!
In certain times in history have been men who stood head and shoulders above the rest, and such men have been concerned to lift the search for Truth up from the level of dispute and killing and to return it to its rightful place. To restore again a beacon of purpose towards which man can strive so that Truth may be absolute and impartial. Such men have had to struggle and suffer in order to realize in themselves the fundamentals of Truth. Little is known of them beyond their names, but each seems to represent a link in a chain coming from antiquity. Evidence of their lives appears in those very temples and cathedrals and paintings which will radiate their message to those who can receive.
If a man takes an impartial look inside himself it is evident that something similar takes place there also. Inside we have the 'multitude' of the gospels. And they are not all by any means in agreement. They strive for power over each other and pull in opposite directions, and we dimly realize the absence of peace in ourselves. There are also those in us who appreciate the harmony of music and the riches of art, but often their day is denied them by others who struggle to achieve ends of a quite different order.
Quietly, and almost unable to make himself audible, there lives in us a Searcher for Truth, and he it is who may be one of the small band who respond when the thread running through the ages appears in his time. It is a miracle if the Searcher is allowed by the multitude to make the response with sufficient force to bring any tangible result and to maintain it.
So here is the drama as over and over again, in the time of Moses in Egypt, in ancient Greece, in Galilee, the Truth is offered. The drama lies between the offer and the response which ebbs and flows as do all things in the universe. This eventually takes a form which we term traditional, the form being of value only when it brings us back from the inevitable deviations. For Europeans the form is usually of a religious character; in other parts of the world it can be the way of the yogi or the way of the fakir.
It seems that the message brought by Gurdjieff issued from his deep understanding of the weakness of the Searcher in us when faced with the 'multitude' with their host of opposing desires. First Gurdjieff calls us to open our eyes - to try to know ourselves as we are with the conflicting demands of the 'multitude' and to face the fact of where they will certainly lead us, and to recognize also where the Searcher could lead us if he could gather sufficient support from the others.
Chapter 3: A Meaning for Living.
Sooner or later the question arises for every child: What are you going to do when you grow up? The question may or may not be answered, but most children have a picture of a favorite nature which supplies a possibility for the future. To be an engine driver, a ballet dancer, a poet. But few steps are taken to implant the wish at that stage. However later on, there enters a word that is formulated as ambition. A man may even have the ambition to be Prime Minister and evidently achieve this. By such means we find meaning for our life.
Not so very long ago, the search for meaning was not so pronounced - we had our ambition it is true, but the meaning of life was clearly stated, since we all went to church on Sunday and we heard that the meaning of life was 'to Glorify God', and in a certain way this blessed all our other activities.
For the time being, however, such a formulation appears not to satisfy and we hear much about meaning and meaningfulness. A man must find meaning for his life, one cannot live without that. And so it is said that a man loses himself in his work, in his family or in his ambition to become. Nevertheless, the search still goes on. Look at the shelves in the bookshops. Not only are they filled to overflowing with books on sex and crime, but also with books of a psychological and spiritual nature, as well as the older books which are being reprinted, such as St. John of the Cross, the Cloud of Unknowing and so on. And they all sell.
But the search goes on. What is the meaning of life? Why do we live and suffer? Much interest is shown in the balance of nature, but although we would prefer to preserve rare species of animals and birds, and not clear away forests, the feeding of mankind seems always to take priority. So evidently we believe that mankind has considerable purposes - perhaps as a part of the whole of animals and birds and forests? Perhaps man is an organism and carries within him the possibility of growth as an individual - a seed?
This is in fact what Gurdjieff tells us: That man has the possibility of inner development. This is not new - it was clearly stated in the Gospels long ago, but at the present time the idea of the sower and the seed is only a picturesque formulation.
Gurdjieff goes further. Not only is man to be likened to an organism, but just as there is a balance necessary in nature, so there is a balance necessary in man. As a rule, man's center of gravity either is predominantly in his intellect, his feeling, or his body. But Gurdjieff calls us to be a balanced whole - the harmonious development of man.
Chapter 4: A Man's Search for His Place
One of the most evident facts which science reveals is the existence of a tremendous order lying behind the natural forms which we are able to observe. The tiniest insect as well as the largest animal feeds on material the source of which had its origin in the basic elements of our cosmos. This brings a man to see that he is also in the same position and he wonders what is the nature of his own relationship to this order. He is dependent on the products of the earth no matter in what refined form that food may eventually reach him. It was perhaps more evident in other times when his needs had to be satisfied by methods more closely involving his intelligent labor, than today when machinery in all its varied forms brings prepared food to the table, and thus obscures the question of his place between the known and the unknown.
Belief or unbelief is conditioned by the background of childhood: A man may have a background of agnosticism, plain disbelief, evangelical religion, or a more profoundly authoritative religion. But whether he conforms to his background or not, questions about the meaning of life will not let him alone. If he is honest in his questioning he will come to realize that, whatever his beliefs, he fails to fulfill them, and in fact is not one man following a certain direction, but composed of many pulling in conflicting directions. The computer may solve problems, the artificial fertilizer may increase crops, the new drugs may have taken the danger out of many illnesses, but in spite of all these achievements, man finds himself remarkably out of control. Still he has to acknowledge the truth of the old Biblical saying, No man by taking thought can add one cubit to his stature. The unanswerable question remains: Why does man suffer, why does man live? In an effort to silence these questions he is driven to engage even more in the tangible yet transitory activities of his immediate life. He shuts himself to deeper questions or in any case leaves them to be attended to 'tomorrow.'
But for some men these questions will not be silenced and the need to know continues to nag. From the basic elements known in ancient times as earth, air, fire, and water, originate a multitude of interdependent forms of life upon a selected number of which man finds himself dependent. In common with all other forms, he must also serve the general requirements of the cosmos. The scientist, the naturalist and others in the fields of research see traces of this interdependence. But can an individual man see his own connections with the relevant indebtedness towards what we make use of? Such thoughts remain to baffle his search for purpose: There is some mystery which a man cannot solve.
Gurdjieff labored and searched to find material which would provide a key to this mystery in terms of present day needs. Such a key has always existed in one form or another in all Traditions, and is so simple that when a man hears of it he is amazed that it was not apparent to him before. Gurdjieff puts the proposition that the truths to which we seek to relate are above the ordinary level of life, and definite work connected with self-knowledge is necessary in order to achieve that relationship. He indicated a direction in which to search, which suggested a change of attitude towards the whole mystery of life. He sought to show the very process of searching is itself a step towards 'awakening' from the level of 'dreaming' or towards life from death. Using the idiom of our day, Gurdjieff reminds man of his possible evolution as an individual. But before a man can begin to move towards this evolution he must face and acknowledge his incompleteness, not as a philosophical concept but as a hard fact. Such direct experience is against all his habitual attitudes, for except in definite moments of bitter realization he has the conviction that he is already complete, already conscious - always the same individual person, which he is not.
Gurdjieff offers us a view of the universe and of man in this universe, of man as a microcosmos or little universe governed by the same laws of the great universe. This universal hierarchy of energies and consciousness contains the scale in which and by which man lives. But he is imprisoned in his troubled dream of living and his self-limiting logic, and is unaware of these potentialities or of his rightful place. Gurdjieff has much to say about this, and in an entirely fresh approach to the study of psychology and physiology opens the way to a real study of man. Ideas received in the mind constitute only a skeleton-like structure to which must be added the flesh and blood of experience in all aspects of life, so that there may be created a living breathing body of understanding. Words cannot impart the necessary understanding, a man needs the help of others struggling in the same direction, and he also needs the guidance of a searcher more experienced than himself.
Chapter 5: The Conditions Required by Life
The passing of time is one of the most implacable conditions of human life; as implacable as the seasons themselves and the definite character of each one. The Old Testament writer knew well: 'To everything there is a season and a time to every purpose under heaven; a time to be born, and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to pluck up that which is planted.'
At a certain season the birds come to this country from distant parts, they remain for a certain definite period before they return once more to whence they came. Where they came from, and to where they return, is an organic necessity of their lives totally without other possibilities.
There are laws everywhere demanding ceaseless exchanges between manifestations of life. The drought of the summer of 1976 brought a realization of the powerlessness of man. It would not rain and nothing could alter that fact. Our total dependence on water was suddenly manifest to us in England though often apparent elsewhere. The web of life is evident everywhere. Lions take the flesh of smaller beasts for their food; a field mouse is the prey of the barn owl. The idea of balance in nature is of course known, but its implacable character defies man's attempt to be the master.
In human life too, only with time can relationship change place in the family. There is a time for looking forward and a time for looking back. Gradually the life of man ceases to be all in the future and finally becomes all in the past. The child becomes the father and then the grandfather.
No longer for instance is it suitable, as in Elizabethan days, to build vast houses for a single family, but we hesitate to let them fall into ruin and are ourselves impoverished by the cost of maintaining them. The stone crumbles, the paint peels and the brickwork falls. Gradually the fabric returns to its original material as part of the earth. In its own time dust returns to dust.
It is as if man had two lives - the life of facts and the life of hopes. The life of hopes is engaged in hoping that facts will not be found to be facts:
Hope it will or will not rain, hoping things will be better soon, hoping people will be different. Such hopes bring us to unhappiness because man is unable to accept the implacability of life - as ye sow so shall ye reap.
The message of Gurdjieff lives in the realization that man dreams and, by dreaming avoids the discipline of facing life's implacable terms: the lawfulness of cause and effect. Gurdjieff speaks of a different kind of hope which is the right of every man who awakes to the laws of the universe, but only at the price of that awakening.
Otherwise, Gurdjieff says, 'They always hope in something, and disappointment is the result.'
Man claims he has the right to be happy, but does not accept the conditions for happiness.
Chapter 6, The Problem of Existence
The very word 'existence' has come to mean the least that can be expected from life. We speak of mere existence. This denotes a life devoid of outside pleasure - just passing our lives. And yet it is not the external events that would make life the miracle that it is. If we could realize what goes on inside each one of us, then existence itself would be miraculous.
We know from the textbooks that if a man were denied air that he would die, but every moment that we live we are taking in and exhaling air, and we have no realization of it. The air which we take in immediately revivifies the blood, but we are only aware of this if something goes wrong. We eat foods of all kinds - too much - too little - things that we shouldn't eat, and the body takes care of it and transforms it into substances suitable for the tissues or rejects it. But we eat while we read a newspaper or listen to the radio and the process goes on without our aid.
We have all developed certain faculties during our lives. There were many latent in us at birth and some of them have been developed. Nothing that was not latent could exist in us now. We even had to learn to walk or speak! We do so many things, many things, yet all these activities take place quite automatically once the initial learning has taken place. Indeed we know that if we interfered, and try to think about them, the activities would fail. But there is a difference between letting these activities carry on as they have been learned to do and indifference to the marvel of a typist's fingers running off a letter at great speed and spelling difficult words without her participation. And what about the astonishing work of our instinct. If a fly approaches my eye, immediately the shutter of my eyelid comes down. If I cut my finger, the tissues set to work to heal the wound. If I eat something poisonous, my stomach throws it out. A biologist will do minute research into organic life, a physician will perform delicate operations on a heart or a brain, but are these men aware of their own miracle which is being enacted in themselves?
The ideas of Gurdjieff make us begin to notice our inner world, and we can read about it in books, but this will not make us actually aware of it: It has to be experienced. So we begin to receive direct experiences of the constant changes in the condition of our blood. Have you ever seen breath stop as someone dies? Suddenly one realizes that the process has ceased in someone else.
It is common knowledge that we need all sorts of different tissues to build and sustain the body: We need different tissues for bone, for skin, for brain cells, for fingernails, for hair. How does the differentiation take place from the food we eat to the parts of the body which it sustains?
Any one of our functions is in itself a cross-section of the marvel of them all. For instance, consider how my eyes select from what is in front of them and the resulting description which comes out of my mouth.
Gurdjieff refers to man as a three-brained being. We have spoken of our instinctive inner world, what of our emotional world? In our present age the power of outside happenings hammers at us through the media. Day after day we are hammered by fear of extermination, by lesser wars, by drownings, by total loss in air crashes. Do we ever hear any good news? The use of the media is well understood by our world leaders. We are disturbed all the time and uncertainty is the instrument of diplomacy.
These influences touch us in our emotions: If we think for a moment we shall realize that havoc is created in our inner world by what comes to us in the form of news. We may be feeling quite cheerful until we turn on the news and what was lighthearted before becomes as heavy as lead inside us. We twist the knob for something to cheer us up and we find an amusing play. We may not find an amusing play, but one which is gloomy; at least it is on our scale so we can share in the emotions of the actors and give release to our own heaviness. Our inner world changes again - even though the play is fictional! In our own personal drama we hate one person and love another: Sometimes we love and hate the same person. All these experiences continually change our metabolism: We feel light, we feel heavy.
What happens to us when we are on the street and we see a parade of soldiers in their scarlet uniforms with a brass band playing? Up come our emotions and we have what is called a lump in our throat.
Am I my own master? As it says in the church service: 'I have left undone those things which I ought to have done, and have done those things which I ought not to have done.'
There are so many mysteries which pass us by. An artist paints or a musician plays so that people are moved. How are we moved? We say a musician puts feeling into his playing - how does he do it? We see perspective in an old Master, but what in fact is perspective? How is the hand and brain coordinated so that a certain result is achieved?
It is said that the earliest packs of cards embodied a system of knowledge and such a one is the Tarot. In the pack there is a card depicting a man with a sack on his back which contains all the means for using the instruments of his inner world, and another where he is seeking for knowledge with a lantern in the light of the day. This is surely our position.
In all times sages have said 'Know thyself.' That would be a real task, and it would reveal for us not borrowed knowledge, but that inner world which we possess. If I am honest what do I know or care about myself and this knowledge within. I breathe, I love, I hate, I eat; in short my life passes.
My life, what is it? It is conducted from the miraculous inner world which I contain and which I ignore.
Chapter 7: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow
The first time I came into contact with Ouspensky there were no published books of the 'ideas'. Consequently, when, at his first lecture, I heard it said that 'We do not remember ourselves' it was as if I had heard something totally new which I could never have thought of myself. It was a new thought - the missing link in my attempt to understand the meaning of our lives.
For many years and by various means I had tried to be a Christian - to be good. But no amount of wishing made any difference, and I already realized I was not one whole, and never knew from day to day who I would be. So I had given up the unequal struggle and was searching in myself to find a meaning. I knew nothing of esotericism, and it could be said that I arrived at Ouspensky's lecture without even expressing the wish to be there. For everyone who hears for the first times those words, "We do not remember ourselves", it can be the supreme moment of realization.
But the strength of this impression soon ceased to be active, and very often it was in the nature of information rather than knowledge. Very soon the old situation asserted itself, but instead of feeing I ought to be a Christian, I began to feel I ought to remember myself! Here was a sterility of living which was only revealed to me later when I met Gurdjieff. Within a few hours of meeting Gurdjieff he had implanted in me something like a new organ of perception. He showed me I was living on the exterior and only "thinking" about remembering myself. He gave me the taste of an awareness of the whole of myself - my body and all it contains of sensitive perception - deeply received inside.
It was not long before this realization also began to fade and again the word ought held sway. Only little by little I began to perceive that Gurdjieff had lifted me up to another level where new knowledge was available, and that the meaning of life was the possibility given to struggle towards that level - not as something that I ought to do, but in answer to a call.
I was often close to Gurdjieff until the last few days of his life and then, suddenly, he was not there anymore - he was gone from us.
I was one of many who had participated in the life around Gurdjieff without any particular sense of responsibility for the work he had undertaken, and now I was supported by those who realized this aspect.
It was like an outflowing stream from those who had received from Gurdjieff: Each found his place, and his relative ability to strive to bring to life this unique moment of perception which each had received. And to bring to life meant to let it grow by trying to be a channel so that a wider and wider influence could touch people in many places of the world.
The writings of Gurdjieff were published, and also, at his request, the account by Ouspensky of his time with Gurdjieff, which is contained in his book In Search of the Miraculous. Little by little small units were strengthened in Paris, London and New York, and from these three centers the influence radiated to other places beyond.
Apart from this spreading from the source, many people throughout the world were touched by the truth of what they could now read in the published books, and translations began to be made as people took what satisfied their needs and by this means the name of Gurdjieff has become known far and wide.
But his teaching is an inexhaustible well of new experiences, and for those who knew him, or are in touch with those who knew him, there is a living possibility for the knowledge to grow through the simple fact that it is discovery of what is lacking rather than what I ought to have. Just as when I first heard that I did not remember myself it came as a new realization, so now, as I search for further inner awareness, it is kept alive only in so far as I allow it to make an increasing demand - not stabilized in formulas but beyond words.
But after all, Gurdjieff was born only 100 years ago and religiousness has been in man since the creation of the world so how could that new knowledge come suddenly from him?
Just as I need to be reminded to remember myself, so humanity needs to receive reminders through the long line of time, from the knowing of Moses down to our day. All myths tell us this too - awakening is necessary, but forgetting is the usual state in which man lives and has always lived. It is like a gong reverberating through the centuries, sounded by those who have known the need to beat it. And now it is our time to hear of knowledge which is always Truth to be revealed in its present form in our moment of awakening. This becomes strangely evident when, after receiving the new knowledge from Gurdjieff, one turns again to the writings of the great Traditions. Suddenly a new meaning is revealed, and one is related for all time to those who have struggled since the world began to touch another level in themselves, only dimly suspected when the search began, and remaining elusive as the search is revealed as eternal and unending.
Basil Tilley
Chapter 1: 'Know Thyself'
Who is this who is forever looking over my shoulder? He uses such words as perhaps, should, should not, can or cannot.
Sometimes he disapproves and sometimes he admires. What is he at, what are his standards? Of course he goes away from time to time and I am happy to get on with what I wish to do, but sooner or later he returns to have a look at what is going on. But also he can be very helpful as, for instance, when I am in a state of imagination about money, sex, or even my own death. At such a moment he can remind me that none of these things I anticipate are happening at this moment. This is a great relief: I had not really seen that! Usually I am only dimly aware that he is there at all: it is a kind of twilight in which my life takes place impinging on my consciousness.
But who is he? Although he appears to be the same person who gives or withholds his approval, his standards of behaviour vary over a wide range. What he wishes to convince me of today, he will pay no attention to tomorrow, and suggests some quite other way of quietening myself from my usual hurry and rush. I even begin to see that we change places - sometimes I am he and sometimes he is me, and in any case who am I? This twilight situation persists, I am only dimly aware that I am not one.
Surely I can't be the only one who has such a situation? Is it perhaps the way "man" is constructed? I look around and see a certain evidence that such phrases as 'I couldn't make up my mind' or 'what would you have done?' cause me to suppose that the state of affairs in myself may be the general state for all us humans. The mass media is providing a wonderful stage to highlight this, peace-keeping forces, political manifestos, racial equality, and so on, and so on, and so on. It begins to be more clear that we are all made up of two opposites - yes or no, for or against, black or white.
Still I am only dimly aware of this and I see that each of us and each nation, indeed every human unit of people, plans and acts as if he were one or a unity. Disagreement is not seen to be inevitable. This is in the routine of things as they are, but there are more serious aspects to consider about this man who looks over my shoulder. He is by no means demanding when it should be necessary to be so, and consequently a good deal of 'getting by' takes place. Indeed he does not insist, in the usual way, that I should look very carefully at my achievements, he allows me to think that I know best. However, there are occasions, as in the case of extreme danger, or sadness, or love, when both he and I disappear; we just have no place.
This is a very strange thing to discover: is there a third person who only appears at moments of great emotion, and also watches what is going on between myself and the one who is looking over my shoulder?
All of us have during our lives strange experiences when we seem to be out of our usual place and time. We go into a room and suddenly everything is still, and, although I may never have been in that room before, I feel that it is familiar to me. Or I have a moment of great emotion and of great intensity which is inexplicable, but which also takes me out of place and time. At such moments am I still the usual person together with the one looking over my shoulder? What makes these moments so alive is that the other two have gone away, I know not where. Or I have gone away, I know not where, and who am I?
So could there be a third participant in my life? In fact all the traditions tell of this possibility. Read the Koran, the Upanishads, the Greeks, the Bible. But you will realize nothing unless you are fortunate to have the key which has been brought through all the ages and offered to man, and which at the present time is offered by Gurdjieff. He puts it plainly in words: we do not remember ourselves. So why do we go on living in the twilight? That is the riddle to be solved - the ko-an as it is called in Zen.
Chapter 2: The Nature of Influences
History shows that all times there has been a struggle for power. This has been on various scales, from huge movements of races, like the Goths, to much smaller struggles between rulers and their more powerful subjects. The modern possibility to have immediate news by radio from all over the world highlights this unceasing struggle. War and peace are seen to be relative conditions and relative in their content.
At the side of this power struggle there is another activity, sometimes involving larger bodies of men and sometimes only individuals. The surface of the earth is littered with the ruins of former constructions of an artistic and religious interpretation such as those in Peru, in Indochina, in Egypt or Greece, which show great skill as well as manifesting something of a special order through what we call beauty. These, too, have had their rise and fall - their time for construction and their time for decay.
Whole nations and races become involved in a struggle for power - often the victims of the ambition of a single man. In the case of the temples and the works of art, the involvement is of a quite different order, but however humble the contributor, he cannot be described as a victim.
There is a third and almost hidden activity which threads through history, and that is the restatement of ancient truths. Buddhism, Christianity, to name but two, originated with a leader assisted by a handful of devoted followers, but as time went on the influence spread, so that large sections of humanity responded to it and a new religion came into being. It can be seen that the periods of the struggle for power are comparatively short-lived compared with the hundreds of years over which a religion spreads its influence. In between there are varying lengths of time during which the centers of culture hold sway. But it is clear that all three have different characteristics and causation and also different requirements. Threading through these three lines have been three dominating ideas. In the first is the idea of race or nation, in the second the idea of beauty, and in the third the idea of Truth. The idea of race remains a constant, only depending on whose race - mine or the enemies. The idea of beauty is more relative and is fundamental to the laws of proportion and scale. But the idea of Truth - ah! Here is a question! Since ancient times conflict has arisen in this sphere and believers and unbelievers remain locked in the struggle for supremacy. In fact Truth is above the level of humanity and remains what it is, whatever the formulation. The desire to possess it and to use it for personal aggrandizement results in holy wars and the inquisition. Instinctively, Truth is felt to be unquestionable: in fact true. And then we try to interpret it!
In certain times in history have been men who stood head and shoulders above the rest, and such men have been concerned to lift the search for Truth up from the level of dispute and killing and to return it to its rightful place. To restore again a beacon of purpose towards which man can strive so that Truth may be absolute and impartial. Such men have had to struggle and suffer in order to realize in themselves the fundamentals of Truth. Little is known of them beyond their names, but each seems to represent a link in a chain coming from antiquity. Evidence of their lives appears in those very temples and cathedrals and paintings which will radiate their message to those who can receive.
If a man takes an impartial look inside himself it is evident that something similar takes place there also. Inside we have the 'multitude' of the gospels. And they are not all by any means in agreement. They strive for power over each other and pull in opposite directions, and we dimly realize the absence of peace in ourselves. There are also those in us who appreciate the harmony of music and the riches of art, but often their day is denied them by others who struggle to achieve ends of a quite different order.
Quietly, and almost unable to make himself audible, there lives in us a Searcher for Truth, and he it is who may be one of the small band who respond when the thread running through the ages appears in his time. It is a miracle if the Searcher is allowed by the multitude to make the response with sufficient force to bring any tangible result and to maintain it.
So here is the drama as over and over again, in the time of Moses in Egypt, in ancient Greece, in Galilee, the Truth is offered. The drama lies between the offer and the response which ebbs and flows as do all things in the universe. This eventually takes a form which we term traditional, the form being of value only when it brings us back from the inevitable deviations. For Europeans the form is usually of a religious character; in other parts of the world it can be the way of the yogi or the way of the fakir.
It seems that the message brought by Gurdjieff issued from his deep understanding of the weakness of the Searcher in us when faced with the 'multitude' with their host of opposing desires. First Gurdjieff calls us to open our eyes - to try to know ourselves as we are with the conflicting demands of the 'multitude' and to face the fact of where they will certainly lead us, and to recognize also where the Searcher could lead us if he could gather sufficient support from the others.
Chapter 3: A Meaning for Living.
Sooner or later the question arises for every child: What are you going to do when you grow up? The question may or may not be answered, but most children have a picture of a favorite nature which supplies a possibility for the future. To be an engine driver, a ballet dancer, a poet. But few steps are taken to implant the wish at that stage. However later on, there enters a word that is formulated as ambition. A man may even have the ambition to be Prime Minister and evidently achieve this. By such means we find meaning for our life.
Not so very long ago, the search for meaning was not so pronounced - we had our ambition it is true, but the meaning of life was clearly stated, since we all went to church on Sunday and we heard that the meaning of life was 'to Glorify God', and in a certain way this blessed all our other activities.
For the time being, however, such a formulation appears not to satisfy and we hear much about meaning and meaningfulness. A man must find meaning for his life, one cannot live without that. And so it is said that a man loses himself in his work, in his family or in his ambition to become. Nevertheless, the search still goes on. Look at the shelves in the bookshops. Not only are they filled to overflowing with books on sex and crime, but also with books of a psychological and spiritual nature, as well as the older books which are being reprinted, such as St. John of the Cross, the Cloud of Unknowing and so on. And they all sell.
But the search goes on. What is the meaning of life? Why do we live and suffer? Much interest is shown in the balance of nature, but although we would prefer to preserve rare species of animals and birds, and not clear away forests, the feeding of mankind seems always to take priority. So evidently we believe that mankind has considerable purposes - perhaps as a part of the whole of animals and birds and forests? Perhaps man is an organism and carries within him the possibility of growth as an individual - a seed?
This is in fact what Gurdjieff tells us: That man has the possibility of inner development. This is not new - it was clearly stated in the Gospels long ago, but at the present time the idea of the sower and the seed is only a picturesque formulation.
Gurdjieff goes further. Not only is man to be likened to an organism, but just as there is a balance necessary in nature, so there is a balance necessary in man. As a rule, man's center of gravity either is predominantly in his intellect, his feeling, or his body. But Gurdjieff calls us to be a balanced whole - the harmonious development of man.
Chapter 4: A Man's Search for His Place
One of the most evident facts which science reveals is the existence of a tremendous order lying behind the natural forms which we are able to observe. The tiniest insect as well as the largest animal feeds on material the source of which had its origin in the basic elements of our cosmos. This brings a man to see that he is also in the same position and he wonders what is the nature of his own relationship to this order. He is dependent on the products of the earth no matter in what refined form that food may eventually reach him. It was perhaps more evident in other times when his needs had to be satisfied by methods more closely involving his intelligent labor, than today when machinery in all its varied forms brings prepared food to the table, and thus obscures the question of his place between the known and the unknown.
Belief or unbelief is conditioned by the background of childhood: A man may have a background of agnosticism, plain disbelief, evangelical religion, or a more profoundly authoritative religion. But whether he conforms to his background or not, questions about the meaning of life will not let him alone. If he is honest in his questioning he will come to realize that, whatever his beliefs, he fails to fulfill them, and in fact is not one man following a certain direction, but composed of many pulling in conflicting directions. The computer may solve problems, the artificial fertilizer may increase crops, the new drugs may have taken the danger out of many illnesses, but in spite of all these achievements, man finds himself remarkably out of control. Still he has to acknowledge the truth of the old Biblical saying, No man by taking thought can add one cubit to his stature. The unanswerable question remains: Why does man suffer, why does man live? In an effort to silence these questions he is driven to engage even more in the tangible yet transitory activities of his immediate life. He shuts himself to deeper questions or in any case leaves them to be attended to 'tomorrow.'
But for some men these questions will not be silenced and the need to know continues to nag. From the basic elements known in ancient times as earth, air, fire, and water, originate a multitude of interdependent forms of life upon a selected number of which man finds himself dependent. In common with all other forms, he must also serve the general requirements of the cosmos. The scientist, the naturalist and others in the fields of research see traces of this interdependence. But can an individual man see his own connections with the relevant indebtedness towards what we make use of? Such thoughts remain to baffle his search for purpose: There is some mystery which a man cannot solve.
Gurdjieff labored and searched to find material which would provide a key to this mystery in terms of present day needs. Such a key has always existed in one form or another in all Traditions, and is so simple that when a man hears of it he is amazed that it was not apparent to him before. Gurdjieff puts the proposition that the truths to which we seek to relate are above the ordinary level of life, and definite work connected with self-knowledge is necessary in order to achieve that relationship. He indicated a direction in which to search, which suggested a change of attitude towards the whole mystery of life. He sought to show the very process of searching is itself a step towards 'awakening' from the level of 'dreaming' or towards life from death. Using the idiom of our day, Gurdjieff reminds man of his possible evolution as an individual. But before a man can begin to move towards this evolution he must face and acknowledge his incompleteness, not as a philosophical concept but as a hard fact. Such direct experience is against all his habitual attitudes, for except in definite moments of bitter realization he has the conviction that he is already complete, already conscious - always the same individual person, which he is not.
Gurdjieff offers us a view of the universe and of man in this universe, of man as a microcosmos or little universe governed by the same laws of the great universe. This universal hierarchy of energies and consciousness contains the scale in which and by which man lives. But he is imprisoned in his troubled dream of living and his self-limiting logic, and is unaware of these potentialities or of his rightful place. Gurdjieff has much to say about this, and in an entirely fresh approach to the study of psychology and physiology opens the way to a real study of man. Ideas received in the mind constitute only a skeleton-like structure to which must be added the flesh and blood of experience in all aspects of life, so that there may be created a living breathing body of understanding. Words cannot impart the necessary understanding, a man needs the help of others struggling in the same direction, and he also needs the guidance of a searcher more experienced than himself.
Chapter 5: The Conditions Required by Life
The passing of time is one of the most implacable conditions of human life; as implacable as the seasons themselves and the definite character of each one. The Old Testament writer knew well: 'To everything there is a season and a time to every purpose under heaven; a time to be born, and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to pluck up that which is planted.'
At a certain season the birds come to this country from distant parts, they remain for a certain definite period before they return once more to whence they came. Where they came from, and to where they return, is an organic necessity of their lives totally without other possibilities.
There are laws everywhere demanding ceaseless exchanges between manifestations of life. The drought of the summer of 1976 brought a realization of the powerlessness of man. It would not rain and nothing could alter that fact. Our total dependence on water was suddenly manifest to us in England though often apparent elsewhere. The web of life is evident everywhere. Lions take the flesh of smaller beasts for their food; a field mouse is the prey of the barn owl. The idea of balance in nature is of course known, but its implacable character defies man's attempt to be the master.
In human life too, only with time can relationship change place in the family. There is a time for looking forward and a time for looking back. Gradually the life of man ceases to be all in the future and finally becomes all in the past. The child becomes the father and then the grandfather.
No longer for instance is it suitable, as in Elizabethan days, to build vast houses for a single family, but we hesitate to let them fall into ruin and are ourselves impoverished by the cost of maintaining them. The stone crumbles, the paint peels and the brickwork falls. Gradually the fabric returns to its original material as part of the earth. In its own time dust returns to dust.
It is as if man had two lives - the life of facts and the life of hopes. The life of hopes is engaged in hoping that facts will not be found to be facts:
Hope it will or will not rain, hoping things will be better soon, hoping people will be different. Such hopes bring us to unhappiness because man is unable to accept the implacability of life - as ye sow so shall ye reap.
The message of Gurdjieff lives in the realization that man dreams and, by dreaming avoids the discipline of facing life's implacable terms: the lawfulness of cause and effect. Gurdjieff speaks of a different kind of hope which is the right of every man who awakes to the laws of the universe, but only at the price of that awakening.
Otherwise, Gurdjieff says, 'They always hope in something, and disappointment is the result.'
Man claims he has the right to be happy, but does not accept the conditions for happiness.
Chapter 6, The Problem of Existence
The very word 'existence' has come to mean the least that can be expected from life. We speak of mere existence. This denotes a life devoid of outside pleasure - just passing our lives. And yet it is not the external events that would make life the miracle that it is. If we could realize what goes on inside each one of us, then existence itself would be miraculous.
We know from the textbooks that if a man were denied air that he would die, but every moment that we live we are taking in and exhaling air, and we have no realization of it. The air which we take in immediately revivifies the blood, but we are only aware of this if something goes wrong. We eat foods of all kinds - too much - too little - things that we shouldn't eat, and the body takes care of it and transforms it into substances suitable for the tissues or rejects it. But we eat while we read a newspaper or listen to the radio and the process goes on without our aid.
We have all developed certain faculties during our lives. There were many latent in us at birth and some of them have been developed. Nothing that was not latent could exist in us now. We even had to learn to walk or speak! We do so many things, many things, yet all these activities take place quite automatically once the initial learning has taken place. Indeed we know that if we interfered, and try to think about them, the activities would fail. But there is a difference between letting these activities carry on as they have been learned to do and indifference to the marvel of a typist's fingers running off a letter at great speed and spelling difficult words without her participation. And what about the astonishing work of our instinct. If a fly approaches my eye, immediately the shutter of my eyelid comes down. If I cut my finger, the tissues set to work to heal the wound. If I eat something poisonous, my stomach throws it out. A biologist will do minute research into organic life, a physician will perform delicate operations on a heart or a brain, but are these men aware of their own miracle which is being enacted in themselves?
The ideas of Gurdjieff make us begin to notice our inner world, and we can read about it in books, but this will not make us actually aware of it: It has to be experienced. So we begin to receive direct experiences of the constant changes in the condition of our blood. Have you ever seen breath stop as someone dies? Suddenly one realizes that the process has ceased in someone else.
It is common knowledge that we need all sorts of different tissues to build and sustain the body: We need different tissues for bone, for skin, for brain cells, for fingernails, for hair. How does the differentiation take place from the food we eat to the parts of the body which it sustains?
Any one of our functions is in itself a cross-section of the marvel of them all. For instance, consider how my eyes select from what is in front of them and the resulting description which comes out of my mouth.
Gurdjieff refers to man as a three-brained being. We have spoken of our instinctive inner world, what of our emotional world? In our present age the power of outside happenings hammers at us through the media. Day after day we are hammered by fear of extermination, by lesser wars, by drownings, by total loss in air crashes. Do we ever hear any good news? The use of the media is well understood by our world leaders. We are disturbed all the time and uncertainty is the instrument of diplomacy.
These influences touch us in our emotions: If we think for a moment we shall realize that havoc is created in our inner world by what comes to us in the form of news. We may be feeling quite cheerful until we turn on the news and what was lighthearted before becomes as heavy as lead inside us. We twist the knob for something to cheer us up and we find an amusing play. We may not find an amusing play, but one which is gloomy; at least it is on our scale so we can share in the emotions of the actors and give release to our own heaviness. Our inner world changes again - even though the play is fictional! In our own personal drama we hate one person and love another: Sometimes we love and hate the same person. All these experiences continually change our metabolism: We feel light, we feel heavy.
What happens to us when we are on the street and we see a parade of soldiers in their scarlet uniforms with a brass band playing? Up come our emotions and we have what is called a lump in our throat.
Am I my own master? As it says in the church service: 'I have left undone those things which I ought to have done, and have done those things which I ought not to have done.'
There are so many mysteries which pass us by. An artist paints or a musician plays so that people are moved. How are we moved? We say a musician puts feeling into his playing - how does he do it? We see perspective in an old Master, but what in fact is perspective? How is the hand and brain coordinated so that a certain result is achieved?
It is said that the earliest packs of cards embodied a system of knowledge and such a one is the Tarot. In the pack there is a card depicting a man with a sack on his back which contains all the means for using the instruments of his inner world, and another where he is seeking for knowledge with a lantern in the light of the day. This is surely our position.
In all times sages have said 'Know thyself.' That would be a real task, and it would reveal for us not borrowed knowledge, but that inner world which we possess. If I am honest what do I know or care about myself and this knowledge within. I breathe, I love, I hate, I eat; in short my life passes.
My life, what is it? It is conducted from the miraculous inner world which I contain and which I ignore.
Chapter 7: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow
The first time I came into contact with Ouspensky there were no published books of the 'ideas'. Consequently, when, at his first lecture, I heard it said that 'We do not remember ourselves' it was as if I had heard something totally new which I could never have thought of myself. It was a new thought - the missing link in my attempt to understand the meaning of our lives.
For many years and by various means I had tried to be a Christian - to be good. But no amount of wishing made any difference, and I already realized I was not one whole, and never knew from day to day who I would be. So I had given up the unequal struggle and was searching in myself to find a meaning. I knew nothing of esotericism, and it could be said that I arrived at Ouspensky's lecture without even expressing the wish to be there. For everyone who hears for the first times those words, "We do not remember ourselves", it can be the supreme moment of realization.
But the strength of this impression soon ceased to be active, and very often it was in the nature of information rather than knowledge. Very soon the old situation asserted itself, but instead of feeing I ought to be a Christian, I began to feel I ought to remember myself! Here was a sterility of living which was only revealed to me later when I met Gurdjieff. Within a few hours of meeting Gurdjieff he had implanted in me something like a new organ of perception. He showed me I was living on the exterior and only "thinking" about remembering myself. He gave me the taste of an awareness of the whole of myself - my body and all it contains of sensitive perception - deeply received inside.
It was not long before this realization also began to fade and again the word ought held sway. Only little by little I began to perceive that Gurdjieff had lifted me up to another level where new knowledge was available, and that the meaning of life was the possibility given to struggle towards that level - not as something that I ought to do, but in answer to a call.
I was often close to Gurdjieff until the last few days of his life and then, suddenly, he was not there anymore - he was gone from us.
I was one of many who had participated in the life around Gurdjieff without any particular sense of responsibility for the work he had undertaken, and now I was supported by those who realized this aspect.
It was like an outflowing stream from those who had received from Gurdjieff: Each found his place, and his relative ability to strive to bring to life this unique moment of perception which each had received. And to bring to life meant to let it grow by trying to be a channel so that a wider and wider influence could touch people in many places of the world.
The writings of Gurdjieff were published, and also, at his request, the account by Ouspensky of his time with Gurdjieff, which is contained in his book In Search of the Miraculous. Little by little small units were strengthened in Paris, London and New York, and from these three centers the influence radiated to other places beyond.
Apart from this spreading from the source, many people throughout the world were touched by the truth of what they could now read in the published books, and translations began to be made as people took what satisfied their needs and by this means the name of Gurdjieff has become known far and wide.
But his teaching is an inexhaustible well of new experiences, and for those who knew him, or are in touch with those who knew him, there is a living possibility for the knowledge to grow through the simple fact that it is discovery of what is lacking rather than what I ought to have. Just as when I first heard that I did not remember myself it came as a new realization, so now, as I search for further inner awareness, it is kept alive only in so far as I allow it to make an increasing demand - not stabilized in formulas but beyond words.
But after all, Gurdjieff was born only 100 years ago and religiousness has been in man since the creation of the world so how could that new knowledge come suddenly from him?
Just as I need to be reminded to remember myself, so humanity needs to receive reminders through the long line of time, from the knowing of Moses down to our day. All myths tell us this too - awakening is necessary, but forgetting is the usual state in which man lives and has always lived. It is like a gong reverberating through the centuries, sounded by those who have known the need to beat it. And now it is our time to hear of knowledge which is always Truth to be revealed in its present form in our moment of awakening. This becomes strangely evident when, after receiving the new knowledge from Gurdjieff, one turns again to the writings of the great Traditions. Suddenly a new meaning is revealed, and one is related for all time to those who have struggled since the world began to touch another level in themselves, only dimly suspected when the search began, and remaining elusive as the search is revealed as eternal and unending.
TALKING this was written by mrs. staveley
"Let us think today about talking - inner and outer talking - and the
harm we do ourselves and others by this mechanical process.
We have an experience and immediately feel the urge to burst
into speech, to translate it into words, to try it out, as it were, on
others.
We have done this so much in the past that we no longer believe in our
experience unless we put it into words. It is not real to us unless we hear
ourselves. Isn't it very strange when you think about it? Surely the reality is in the experience and not in the words I dress it in which inevitably limit and contain it. And yet we believe in words. It is almost a compulsion to talk. With some it amounts to disease. We can see, or
rather hear this in others, but do we hear in in ourselves?
I have an experience. It is mine, unique to me. If I put it into words
I externalize it, limit it, even distort it. My experience is no longer
mine. It is a newspaper or textbook account of itself.
Try to see this: How much is lost, how much is changed, so that I no
longer live my own life but a newspaper account of it. It is dull,
banal, stereotyped.
In Ecclesiastes it is said: "There is a time to speak and a time to remain
silent." Do we know this? Can we sense it? Even when we remain silent
outwardly the talking machine is racing ahead inwardly so there is no
room for a new impression to enter. The work tells us to practice inward
silence even more than outer. Do we try to do this? Do we even know
where to begin? Perhaps not yet. We have to begin with outer talking.
It is very well known that it is less difficult to remain silent
altogether than it is to refrain from speaking about one particular thing. Is there something you very much wish to speak about with others? Try to catch the moment when you fail, when you forget - the sensation of indulging a weakness, the self-justification that follows, the turning aside from any flicker of conscience. Or perhaps by some accident you are able to refrain from outer talking; then watch the rush of words in your inner world. Make the effort to stop, to avert your inner attention to something else. Almost always when one can do this there is an accession of strength. My not speaking (inside or outside) strengthens me; or rather, I keep my strength for myself. I can sense that the compulsion to talk weakens me. Try to do this. It is a very important part of the work."
harm we do ourselves and others by this mechanical process.
We have an experience and immediately feel the urge to burst
into speech, to translate it into words, to try it out, as it were, on
others.
We have done this so much in the past that we no longer believe in our
experience unless we put it into words. It is not real to us unless we hear
ourselves. Isn't it very strange when you think about it? Surely the reality is in the experience and not in the words I dress it in which inevitably limit and contain it. And yet we believe in words. It is almost a compulsion to talk. With some it amounts to disease. We can see, or
rather hear this in others, but do we hear in in ourselves?
I have an experience. It is mine, unique to me. If I put it into words
I externalize it, limit it, even distort it. My experience is no longer
mine. It is a newspaper or textbook account of itself.
Try to see this: How much is lost, how much is changed, so that I no
longer live my own life but a newspaper account of it. It is dull,
banal, stereotyped.
In Ecclesiastes it is said: "There is a time to speak and a time to remain
silent." Do we know this? Can we sense it? Even when we remain silent
outwardly the talking machine is racing ahead inwardly so there is no
room for a new impression to enter. The work tells us to practice inward
silence even more than outer. Do we try to do this? Do we even know
where to begin? Perhaps not yet. We have to begin with outer talking.
It is very well known that it is less difficult to remain silent
altogether than it is to refrain from speaking about one particular thing. Is there something you very much wish to speak about with others? Try to catch the moment when you fail, when you forget - the sensation of indulging a weakness, the self-justification that follows, the turning aside from any flicker of conscience. Or perhaps by some accident you are able to refrain from outer talking; then watch the rush of words in your inner world. Make the effort to stop, to avert your inner attention to something else. Almost always when one can do this there is an accession of strength. My not speaking (inside or outside) strengthens me; or rather, I keep my strength for myself. I can sense that the compulsion to talk weakens me. Try to do this. It is a very important part of the work."
ancestors
They knew flowers’ names
And used words that we no longer use any more
Words that we never heard before
Pitched and falling
Singing archaically and calling to us
In a way that we don’t feel called by any more.
We’ve gone on,
Left fields and trees behind
Left moments that filled spaces
And lived like silence, we’ve
Squeezed out silent spaces
And built our homes on hardened science
Made our highways out of untied ties
To drive a lighted terror
Deep into the endless night.
And used words that we no longer use any more
Words that we never heard before
Pitched and falling
Singing archaically and calling to us
In a way that we don’t feel called by any more.
We’ve gone on,
Left fields and trees behind
Left moments that filled spaces
And lived like silence, we’ve
Squeezed out silent spaces
And built our homes on hardened science
Made our highways out of untied ties
To drive a lighted terror
Deep into the endless night.
dissolute dood friday
Love was betrayed by us
Sleep does not last
Regret has delayed us
As they say,
What is past is past.
Laughter won’t survive the night
Tears will dry and having dried
Silence finds us empty
And we have denied Christ
On Saturday morning
just a poem
Can this be seaside sunlight?
The south-east sky so blue,
I can see it in a window
Spring white, light green
Leaves and blossom waving in the wind
Much more than anything that window scene
That square of shifting white and blue and green
And they say, more and more are we
Remember things that you have never seen
And long for things beyond the dream of dreams
Sun and sky and wind and trees
We are beyond your time,
Beyond your mind,
Beyond your reach.
now
this
is the soap in the bath moment
little effort for an ungrasped statement
a little bit of i -don’t- know
but the feeling of slippery now and its inarticulate especiality,
so much has been ruled out
in the time lag between the line and its inscription,
the maybe and the risk of the decision
to face the light
not now,
but in a million cold dawns,
bereft of reminiscence
is the soap in the bath moment
little effort for an ungrasped statement
a little bit of i -don’t- know
but the feeling of slippery now and its inarticulate especiality,
so much has been ruled out
in the time lag between the line and its inscription,
the maybe and the risk of the decision
to face the light
not now,
but in a million cold dawns,
bereft of reminiscence
Friday 21 January 2011
Thursday 20 January 2011
Tuesday 4 January 2011
entererd in error
something nothing to do with the sense and aim of this blog thing- vile word blog- got in by mistake but it is replaced by this as the only way of deleting it that i can come up with
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
