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Post by stardustpilgrim on Nov 10, 2015 19:26:22 GMT -5
It seems that only a few here (ST's) get that there is significant differentiation in Wholeness, that I can be a non-dualist, but only with qualification, that there are significant 'reasons' for ~separation~. I'll try to give some quotes as further explanation. edit: The bold concerns the Whole, and that in relation to man, emphasis sdp.
Glimpses of Truth, excerpts:
...I will refer to the formula you know from the Emerald Tablets: 'As above, so below'. It is easy to start to build the foundation of our discussion from this. ...Truth speaks for itself in whatever form it is manifested. You will understand this fully only in the course of time, but I wish to give to you today at least a grain of understanding. ...I begin with the formula because I am speaking to you. I know you have tried to decipher this formula. I know that you 'understand' it. But the understanding you have now is only a dim and distant reflection of the divine brilliance. ...we will only take it as a starting point for our discussion. And to give you an idea of our subject, I may say that I wish to speak about the overall unity of all that exists--about unity in multiplicity. ...
I know you understand about the unity of the laws governing the universe, but this understanding is speculative--or rather is theoretical. It is not enough to understand with the mind, it is necessary to feel with your being the absolute truth and immutability of this fact; only then you will be able, consciously and with conviction, to say 'I know'. ....We started with man, and where is he? But great, and all-embracing is the law of unity. Everything in the universe is one, the difference is only one of scale; in the infinity small we shall find the same laws as in the infinitely great. As above, so below. ...Again I repeat, all in the world is one; and since reason is also one, human reason forms a powerful instrument for investigation. ...
...No ordinary reason is enough to enable a man to take the Great Knowledge to himself, and make it his inalienable possession. Nevertheless it is possible for him. But first he must shake the dust from his feet. ...You see, Mr. Gurdjieff went on, that he who possess a full and complete understanding of the system of octaves, as it might be called, possesses the key to the understanding of Unity, since he understands all that is seen--all happenings, all things in their essence--for he knows there place, cause and effect with energies dispersed. Until I observe myself becoming aware, I am not fully awake.”
Speed Vogel, an artist and retired businessman in the movement for 15 years, is also a member of the “Gourmet Club,” a group of New York wits that includes, among others, Joseph Heller, Mario Puzo, Mel Brooks and Joseph Stein. Vogel, one of the more candid Gurdjieffians, spoke freely when I interviewed him in a Chinese restaurant amid sizzling rice, bamboo shoots and wisecracks from his “gang,” some of whom professed to find his “Gurdjieff thing spooky.”
“I'm not a searcher,” Mario Puzo said. “I have all I can handle right now.” Then he joked, about Vogel: “But we're his friends, so we'll put up with anything.”
Speed Vogel himself was more serious. “After 10 years of psychoanalysis,” he said, “I realized I was not ‘free’ in the total sense of that word. The Gurdjieff work gave me freedom.” He had always been interested in Zen Buddhism, he added, “but it was too foreign, too incompatible. Gurdjieff was easier to accept. The Gurdjieff work is an inner thing,” Vogel concluded. “On the outside, I'm the same man I have always been. The difference is inside me. I can still joke with Mel Brooks or Joe Heller and yet go my own way.”
Certainly, as in any movement, there are the defectors and the disenchanted. Some complain that Gurdjieff, the man, was too unorthodox to be a real spiritual master at all. Others protest that his teaching is too demanding and too difficult to follow, the men and women in the groups too sophomoric. Some say that the foundation people adhere to old ideas, that they do not update the teaching so that it becomes relevant to today's world. They criticize the foundation for its hierarchical structure.
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Post by stardustpilgrim on Nov 11, 2015 19:15:24 GMT -5
Again, from Glimpses of Truth the bold is emphasis by sdp concerning Wholeness
"I watched the illumination of his thought come increasingly into focus on one point. The inevitable conclusion of all that he said was the great law of tri-unity: the law of the three principles of action, resistance and equipoise: the active, passive and neutralizing principles. ...One and the same law ruled all; with delighted understanding I pursued the harmonious development of the Universe. ...While he made this exposition, Mr, Gurdjieff noted the necessity of what he called a "shock" reaching a given place from outside and connecting the two opposite principles into one balanced unity. This corresponded to the point of application of force in a balanced system of forces in mechanics.
He said a few words about the laws of the scale's structure, and particularly stressed the gaps, as he called them, which exist in every octave between the notes mi and fa and also between si of one octave and do of the next. Between these notes are there are missing half-tones, in both the ascending and descending scales. ...He explained how these two gaps, according to certain laws depending on the law of tri-unity, were filled in by new octaves of other orders, these octaves within the gaps playing a part similar to that of the half-tones in the evolutionary or involutionary process of the octave. The principle octave was similar to a tree trunk, sending out branches of subordinate octaves. The seven principle notes of the octave and the two gaps, "bearers of new directions", gave a total of nine links of a chain, or three groups of three links each. ...
You see, Mr. Gurdjieff went on, that he who possesses a full and complete understanding of the system of octaves, possesses the key to the understanding of Unity, since he understand all that is seen--all happenings, all things in their essence--for he knows there place, cause and effect. ....I think even now and without further explanation you would not dispute the fact that the life of individual man--the Microcosmos--is ruled by the same law". unquote
Gurdjieff taught that the law of 3 and the law of 7 (also known as the law of octaves) are the two fundamental laws of the universe, and a partial understanding these two laws gives a partial picture of how forces in the universe operate. There is a symbol which shows the unity of these two laws, which the quotes above correspond to. If you wish to, you can draw this symbol from the following directions. Draw a circle of about two inches in diameter (or smaller or larger). Divide the circle into nine equal parts (the circle itself, you can put a small dot on the circle itself, to indicate the divisions, make one dot the top. For an easy approximation of this, you can divide the circle into three equal segments, and then divide those three segments into 3 equal segments). Place a 9 above the dot at the top of the circle, outside the circle. Then at each dot, beginning to the right, number the next, 1 and then number each dot successively 2-8 (again, numbers outside the circle). Now numbers one through nine should be at the dots of your nine divisions. Now divide 1 by 7 and write down your answer to refer to, you will have a repeating fraction. Start with one (edit: Actually you can start with any number in the fraction, and just follow the sequence, but the first number is one) and draw a straight line, through the circle connecting each successive numbered dot, using the numbers of your fraction, in order (from your division of 1 by 7), until you arrive at the first repeated number. You will be left with three numbers. Then draw a line from these 'left over' numbers, connecting the dots, through the circle, again, until you come back to your original number. In this manner you will have used numbers 1-9, and you will have the symbol, and many if not most of you will recognize it.
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Post by stardustpilgrim on Nov 13, 2015 1:24:52 GMT -5
Stardustpilgrim, It's a mind f*^k if you take it seriously... and a bit of fun if you are just playing with it. Who is a 'non-dualist'? You are - just you, no labels. Human being. tano, Once Gurdjieff was asked what he taught. His reply: I teach that when it rains, the pavements get wet. |
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Post by stardustpilgrim on Nov 13, 2015 18:45:12 GMT -5
."...man is unable to explain what he himself really is". Gurdjieff
"Man's possibilities are very great. You cannot conceive even a shadow of what man is capable of attaining. But nothing can be attained in sleep. In the consciousness of a sleeping man, his illusions, his 'dreams' are mixed with reality. He lives in a subjective world...he always lives in only a small part of himself. ...It has been said before that self-study and self-observation, if rightly conducted, bring man to the realization of the fact that something is wrong...that it is precisely because he is asleep that he lives and works in a small part of himself. ...Self-observation brings man to the realization of the necessity for self-change. ...He begins to understand that self-observation is an instrument of self-change, a means of awakening. ...And under the influence of this light the processes themselves begin to change. ...Even a feeble light of consciousness is enough to change completely the character of a process, while it makes many of them altogether impossible.
When a man comes to realize the necessity not only for of self-study and self-observation but also for work on himself with the object of changing himself, the character of his self-observation must change. ...Instead of the man he supposed himself to be he will see quite another man. This 'other' man is himself and at the same time not himself. It is he as other people know him, as he imagines himself and as he appears in his actions, words and so on; but not altogether such as he actually is. For a man himself knows that there is a great deal that is unreal, invented, and artificial in this other man whom other people know and whom he knows himself. You must learn to divide the real from the invented. And to begin self-observation and self-study it is necessary to divide oneself. A man must realize that he indeed consists of two men.
One is the man he calls 'I' and whom others call 'Ouspensky'. The other is the real he, the real I, which appears in his life only for very short moments and which can become firm and permanent only after a very lengthy period of work. So long as a man takes himself as one person he will never move from where he is. His work on himself starts from the moment when he begins to feel two men in himself. One is passive and the most it can do is register or observe what is happening to it. The other, which calls itself 'I', is active, and speaks of itself in the first person, is in reality only 'Ouspensky'. This is the first realization that a man can have. ...
Self-observation becomes observation of 'Ouspensky'. A man understands that he is not 'Ouspensky', that 'Ouspensky' is nothing but the mask he wears, the part that he unconsciously plays and which unfortunately he cannot stop playing, a part which rules him and makes him do and say thousands of stupid things, thousands of things which he would never do or say himself. ...'Ouspensky' is his master. He is the slave. He has no will of his own. ...On this level of self-observation a man must understand that his whole aim is to free himself from 'Ouspensky'. And since he cannot in fact free himself from 'Ouspensky' because he is himself...the first stage of work on oneself consists of separating oneself from 'Ouspensky' mentally, in being separated from him in actual fact, is keeping apart from him. But the fact must be borne in mind that the whole attention must be concentrated upon 'Ouspensky' for a man is unable to explain what he himself really is. But he can explain 'Ouspensky' to himself and with this he must begin, remembering at the same time that he is not 'Ouspensky'. ....As was said earlier, self-observation brings a man to the realization of the fact that he does not remember himself". report from PD Ouspensky, from 1914-early '20's, his chosen title became the subtitle: Fragments of an Unknown Teaching, published in 1949, after Ouspensky's (1947) death and after being sent to Gurdjieff by Madame Ouspensky, from Franklin Farms, NJ.
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Post by stardustpilgrim on Nov 15, 2015 9:57:25 GMT -5
"Man's possibilities are very great. You cannot conceive even a shadow of what man is capable of attaining. But nothing can be attained in sleep. In the consciousness of a sleeping man, his illusions, his 'dreams' are mixed with reality. He lives in a subjective world.."
Do you know what I found so hillarious 'after'? The process of reinventing the wheel, each generation.. again and again. I laughed my head off from realisation of having found myself in the company of the 'greats'... those who walked before me, who struggled the same struggles, felt the same pain and terror and have found at last. They wrote books about it. I haven't, and never will, for I am the Presence. But suddenly the world has become full of the equals... some saw clearly, and no matter how 'big' their names were - it meant nothing. And some didn't see, and it was still OK, they too were equal, for once in my past life I was - THEM. They (all of the people) are me, and I am them. I have found who I am. And if anyone asks - I cannot put this into words. But the Knowing is there. It takes a a couple of minutes to see who got it, and who are still in the fog. Hey tano, You trashed my quotes on Nov. 12, 2015 8:25am. You do know that all the quotes are by the same person? |
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Post by jay17 on Nov 15, 2015 13:12:14 GMT -5
What is self? Macrocosm & Microcosm, as above, so below I like the "As above, so below" concept. It seems to be used by more than one culture or philosophy, sometimes with slight variations. I use it in regards to the outer physical realm and the inner non corporeal one..."As without, so within" I have noticed mechanisms that are related to my body, or how i interface with other physical forms, are similar to my inner self and how i thoughtfully and emotionally relate to myself and others. As for your question, it seems to me that each person uses their consciousness\soul\intellect to create their own understanding\conclusions\beliefs of what they are. Either unconsciously or with great awareness, or with various mixtures of both, each person decides what they will classify as truth, and thus will then interface with existence based on these truths. Sadly, it seems to me that many people waste a lot of their finite human lives by arguing with each other about who's version of existence is correct or the best. Of course, many who do argue may not classify such work as a waste of time, simply due to the relationship they have with their version of existence, the great value they bestow upon it. It seems quite logical to me that if one believes XYZ to be the absolute truth about existence, they are going to dedicate their lives to it. And my code of conduct it to let them do as they see fit. What is Self? Whatever you reason it to be, and may your conclusions serve you well and create a better life for yourself and all other living creatures you are connectd to. |
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Post by stardustpilgrim on Nov 15, 2015 20:29:53 GMT -5
Yes, of course. The same person can be full of Wisdom.. and nuts. I meant to say... full of s h i t. Indubitably. But the operative word, is can. |
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Post by stardustpilgrim on Nov 18, 2015 9:18:38 GMT -5
from Fragments
"But even apart from all this before we can speak of 'cosmic consciousness' we must define in general what consciousness is. "How do you define consciousness?"
Consciousness is said to be indefinable, I (Ouspensky) said, and indeed, how can it be defined if it is an inner quality? With the ordinary means at our disposal it is impossible to prove the presence of consciousness in another man. We know it only in ourselves.
"All this is rubbish, said Gurdjieff, the usual scientific sophistry. It is time you got rid of it. Only one thing is true in what you have said: that you can know consciousness only in yourself. Observe that I say to you can know, for you can know it only when you have it. And when you have not got it, you can know that you have not got it, not at that very moment, but afterwards. I mean that when it comes again you can see that it has been absent a long time, and you can find or remember the moment when it disappeared and when it reappeared. You can also define the moments when you were nearer to consciousness and further away from consciousness. But by observing in yourself the appearance and the disappearance of consciousness you will inevitably see one fact which you neither see nor acknowledge now, and that is that moments of consciousness are very short and are separated by long intervals of completely unconscious, mechanical working of the machine. You will then see that you can think, feel, act, speak, work, without being conscious of it. And if you learn to see in yourselves the moments of consciousness and the long periods of mechanicalness, you will infallibly see in other people when they are conscious of what they are doing and when they are not.
Your principle mistake consists is in thinking that you always have consciousness, and in general, either that consciousness is always present or that it is never present. In reality consciousness is a property which is continually changing. Now it is present, now it is not present. And there are different degrees and different levels of consciousness. Both consciousness and the different degrees of consciousness must be understood in oneself by sensation, by taste. No definitions can help you in the case and no definitions are possible so long as you do not understand what you have to define. And science and philosophy cannot define consciousness because they want to define it where it does not exist. It is necessary to distinguish consciousness from the possibility of consciousness. We have only the possibility of consciousness and rare flashes of it. Therefore we cannot define what consciousness is".
I cannot say that what was said about consciousness became clear to me at once. But one of the subsequent talks explained to me the principles on which these arguments were based".
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Post by stardustpilgrim on Nov 23, 2015 17:12:19 GMT -5
Keep in mind that sometimes in In Search of the Miraculous (Fragments) Ouspensky is speaking from his perspective and sometimes he is quoting Gurdjieff. He always makes clear which.
"On one occasion at the beginning of a meeting Gurdjief put a question to which all those present had to answer in turn. The question was: What is the most important thing that we notice during self-observation? ...Gurdjieff was obviously dissatisfied with our replies. ...Not one of you has noticed the most important thing that I have pointed out to you, he said. That is to say not one of you has noticed that you do not remember yourselves. (He gave particular emphasis to these words). You do not feel yourselves; you are not conscious of yourselves. With you, 'it observes' just as 'it speaks', 'it thinks', 'it laughs'. You do no feel: I observe, I notice, I see. Everything still 'is noticed', 'is seen...In order to really observe oneself one must first of all remember oneself. (He again emphasized these words). Try to remember yourselves when you observe yourselves and later tell me the results. Only those results will have any value that are accompanied by self-remembering. Otherwise you yourselves do not exist is in your observations. In which case what are your observations worth?
These words of Gurdjieff made me think a great deal. It seemed to me at once that thy were the key to what he had said before about consciousness. But I decided to draw no conclusions whatever, but to try to remember myself while observing myself. The very first attempts showed me how difficult it was. Attempts at self-remembering failed to give any results except to show me that in actual fact we never remember ourselves.
What else do you want?, said Gurdjieff. This is a very important realization. People who know this (he emphasized these words) already know a great deal. The whole trouble is that nobody knows it. If you ask a man whether he can remember himself, he will of course answer that he can. If you tell him that he cannot remember himself, he will either be angry with you, or he will think you an utter fool. The whole of life is based on this, the whole of human existence, the whole of human blindness. If a man really knows that he cannot remember himself, he is already near to the understanding of his being.
All that Gurdjieff said, all that I myself thought, and especially all that my attempts at self-remembering had shown me, very soon convinced me that I was faced with an entirely new problem which science and philosophy had not, so far, come across. But before making deductions, I will try to describe my attempts to remember myself. ....I subsequently became convinced that this idea was hidden by an impenetrable veil for many otherwise very intelligent people--and still later on I saw why this was so".
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Post by stardustpilgrim on Dec 22, 2015 23:48:36 GMT -5
The following are Ouspensky's attempts at self-remembering, without specific instructions, except: "Try to remember yourselves", and some discussion (given in the previous post).
"The first impression was that attempts to remember myself or to be conscious of myself, to say to myself, I am walking, I am doing, and continually to feel this I, stopped thought. When I was feeling I, I could neither think nor speak; even sensations became dimmed. Also, one could remember oneself in this way for a very short time.
I previously made certain experiments in stopping thought which are mentioned in books on Yoga practices. ...And my first attempts to self-remember reminded me exactly of these, my first experiments. Actually it was almost the same thing with the one difference that in stopping thoughts attention is wholly directed towards the effort of not admitting thoughts, while in self-remembering attention becomes divided, one part of it is directed towards the same effort, and the other part to the feeling of self.
This last realization enabled me to to come to a certain, possibly a very incomplete, definition of "self-remembering", which nevertheless proved to be very useful in practice. I am speaking of the division of attention which is the characteristic feature of self-remembering. I represented it to myself in the following way: When I observe something, my attention is directed towards what I observe. ...When at the same time, I try to remember myself, my attention is directed both towards the object observed and towards myself.
Having defined this I saw that the problem consisted in directing attention on oneself without weakening or obliterating the attention directed on something else. Moreover this "something else" could as well be within me as outside me.
The very first attempts at such a division of attention showed me its possibility. A the same time I saw two things clearly. In the first place I saw that self-remembering resulting from this method had nothing in common with "self-feeling', or 'self-analysis". It was a new and very interesting state with a strangely familiar flavor.
And secondly I realized that moments of self-remembering do occur in life, although rarely. Only the deliberate production of these moments created the sensation of novelty. Actually I had been familiar with them from early childhood. They came either in new and unexpected surroundings, in a new place, among new people while traveling, for instance, when suddenly one looks about one and says: How strange! I and in this place; or in very emotional moments, in moments of danger, in moments when it is necessary to keep one's head, when one hears one's own voice and sees and observes oneself from the outside.
I saw quite clearly that my first recollections of life, in my own case very early ones, were moments of self-remembering. This last realization revealed much else to me. That is, I saw that I really only remember those moments of the past in which I remembered myself. Of the others I know only that they took place. I am not able wholly to revive them, to experience them again. But the moments when I had remembered myself were alive and in no way different from the present. I was still afraid to come to conclusions. But I already saw that I stood upon the threshold of a very great discovery. I had always been astonished at the weakness and inefficiency of our memory. So many things disappear. For some reason or other the chief absurdity of life for me consisted in this. Why experience so much in order to forget it afterwards? Besides there was something degrading in this. A man feels something which seems to him to be very big, he thinks he will never forget it; one or two years pass by-and nothing remains of it. It now became clear to me why this was so and why it could not be otherwise. If our memory keeps alive only moments of self-remembering, it is clear why our memory is so poor. All these were the realizations of the first days. ... pages 118, 119, 120
In Search of the Miraculous, 1949, PD Ouspensky
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Post by Deleted on Dec 23, 2015 5:39:24 GMT -5
when i was 5, 6 years old, my mom used to read ouspensky--i can still see in my minds eye, the book in the bookshelf.I recall asking her what it was about...she just replied--´´about many different dimensions--it is difficult´´
did not read half of this thread,too long, sorry.
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Post by stardustpilgrim on Dec 28, 2015 23:18:06 GMT -5
The Arousing of Thought
"...owing to causes not dependent upon me, but flowing from the strange and accidental circumstances of my life, I happen to be writing books,...
This psycho-organic principle of mine I shall this time begin to actualize not by following the practice of all writers, established from the remote past down to the present, of taking as the theme of their various writings the events which have supposedly taken place, or are taking place, on Earth, but shall take instead as the scale of events for my writings--the Whole Universe. Thus in the present case also, "If you take then take!"--that is to say, "If you go on a spree then go the whole hog including the postage". .....
During the last weeks, while lying in bed, my body quite sick, I mentally drafted a summary of my future writings and thought out the form and sequence of their exposition, and I decided to make the chief hero of the first series of my writings...do you know whom?...the Great Beelzebub Himself...
Introduction
Why Beelzebub Was in Our Solar System
It was the year 223 after the creation of the World, by objective time-calculation, or, as it would be said here on the "Earth", in the year 1921 after the birth of Christ.
Through the Universe flew the ship Karnak of the "transspace" communication. It was flying from the spaces "Assooparaysata", that is, from the spaces of the "Milky Way", from the planet Karatas to the solar system "Pandetznokh", the sun of which is also called the "Pole Star".
On the said "transspace" ship was Beelzebub with his kinsmen and near attendants. He was on his way to the planet Revozvradendr to a special conference in which he had consented to take part, at the request of his friends of long standing.
Only the remembrance of these old friendships had constrained him to accept this invitation, since he was no longer young, and so lengthy a journey, and the vicissitudes inseparable from it, were by no means an easy task for one of his years. Only a little before this journey Beelzebub had returned home to the planet Karatas where he had received his arising and far from which, on account of circumstances independent of his own essence, he had passed many years of his existence in conditions not proper to his nature.
This many-yeared existence, unsuited to him, together with the perceptions unusual for his nature and experiences not proper to his essence involved in it, had not failed to leave on his common presence a perceptible mark. Besides, time itself had by now inevitably aged him, and the said unusual conditions of his existence had brought Beelzebub, just that Beelzebub who had had such an exceptionally strong, fiery, and splendid youth, to an also exceptional old age".
pages 40, 41, 51, 52 All and Everything, First Series, Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson, 1950, G Gurdjieff
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Post by stardustpilgrim on Jan 9, 2016 22:58:50 GMT -5
"And as, owing to those same wrongly established conditions there, not all the beings have the possibility of becoming thus satisfied, then, on this account and for many other reasons, most of them, even with their full desire, can neither think sincerely nor see and sense reality, and therefore 'sincere thinking' and the 'sensing of reality' have already long ago become a very rare luxury on this planet of yours and inaccessible to most of them.
..........Well then, when these same young beings, who almost always become power-possessing, become responsible beings and begin to bear responsible obligations, they of course do not have any data at all for manifesting what is called 'logical reflection', owing to the fact that they have not used the time destined by Great Nature exclusively for the purposes of preparing in themselves being data for a worthy and responsible existence, but waste it only for developing in themselves the properties which flow from the totality of the results of this celebrated education of theirs, which, as a rule, dictates to them how better to give oneself up to what is called 'self-calming'.
Thanks to this abnormal education of theirs, not only is nothing crystallized in them to enable them to reflect and actualize anything effective in practice, but on the contrary, thanks to this abnormal education those many consequences of the properties of the for them accursed organ Kundabuffer devised by the great Angel, now already Archangel Looisos, are gradually formed in them and become organic functions, and, being transmitted by heredity from one generation to another, are in general crystallized in the psyche of these unfortunates.
Namely, those consequences of the said organ are formed in them, which exist there today under the names of 'egoism', 'partiality', 'vanity', 'self-love', and so on.
For such power-possessing or important beings there our wise Mullah Nassr Eddin also had a very interesting definition, and, namely, he says: 'The degree of the importance of these people depends upon only the number of their corns'.
And so, my boy... When these three-brained beings of your planet, particularly of the present time, who have the means of gorging to satiety and of fully satisfying all their other needs and who perhaps could do something for the struggle of the phenomenal evil prevailing on their planet, are satiated, and their mentioned needs are satisfied, and they are seated on what are called their 'soft English divans' in order, as is said there, 'to digest it all'--they do not profit, even during this time so suitable for sincere thinking, by those favorable conditions, but indulge instead in the maleficent self-calming.
And since it is impossible for all the three-brained beings of the Universe and therefore also for the beings of your planet to exist without the process of mentation, and since at the same time your favorites wish to have the possibility of indulging very freely in their inner 'evil god self-calming', they then very gradually and very efficiently accustom themselves that a sort of thinking should proceed in them purely automatically, entirely without the participation of any being-effort of their own.
One must give them their due; in this they have attained perfection, and at the present time their thoughts flow in all directions without any intentional exertion of any part whatsoever of their presence". pages 1058-1060
Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson, 1950, G Gurdjieff
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Post by stardustpilgrim on Mar 1, 2016 9:01:20 GMT -5
"If you wish for freedom--even the lesser freedom--you must be ready to pay a big price. Sometimes people complain to me that they cannot do the tasks that I give them. What do they expect? It is enough if you see the possibility of doing them--the rest depends upon the strength of your own wish to be free. At present, you cannot do, because you are not free.
You must understand that you cannot begin with freedom--freedom is the goal, the aim. People say that God created man free. That is a great misunderstanding. Freedom cannot be given to anyone--even by our all-loving Creator himself. God has given to man the biggest thing he can--that is, the possibility to become free. The desire for freedom exists in every man worth of the name--but people are stupid, and they think they can have outward freedom without inner freedom. All our evil comes from this stupidity. Unless we desire, first of all, to be free from our own inner enemies, we shall only go from bad to worse.
Therefore, everyone must examine himself and try to find in himself a sincere wish to be free from the forces of vanity and self-love acting in him. That inner slavery is the worst degradation in man; it is the hell in which man allows himself to exist. The sincere wish to be free from that degradation is the beginning of real pride".
"Gurdjieff's lectures, which were always given at unexpected moments, were for most of us the high spots of life at the Prieure". ... page 116, from: Gurdjieff: Making A New World by JG Bennett, 1973
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Post by stardustpilgrim on Mar 30, 2016 18:31:33 GMT -5
"Everybody, especially all the young people, actually worshiped Madame de Hartmann. She had been with Gurdjieff since St. Petersburg, but it wasn't just that; she had this special vibration, something extraordinary. At one time I was very interested in ego. I couldn't see my ego. I would ask her questions and she would give me certain tasks, but I couldn't see it. And I would drive her places. I was developing an attitude, an arrogance: I'd be thinking, 'I know Mme. de Hartmann. I brought Mme. de Hartmann to the meeting!' Once, after bringing her to my group meeting, somebody said: 'It's so good that you're here Madame'. And she said, 'Well, I'm here, but not for Brewster. For someone like him I'd never come, but for you and the others, maybe there's some sincerity. I come for that'. And after that, every single question was answered with, 'But Brewster could never understand this. He's worthless you know'. Every single thing. I was sitting there with the blood pounding in my ears. My face must have been as red as a beet. I was emotionally very upset. And suddenly I thought, 'Everything I'm feeling now is ego. She's not trying to insult me. She's showing me my ego'. And I started to take in impressions of myself, saw the look on my face, saw they way I was holding myself: all ego! I realized I had been arrogant in my group, very arrogant, because I knew Mme. de Hartmann--right after I had come back to the groups, over the next year. She kept going on the entire evening like this. Later, I had to drive her back home, and there was silence in the car for a while. And the she said, 'Do you know what I tried to do?' And I said, 'I just want you to know, Madame, that not only do I not hold it against you, I thank you very much'. And we both laughed, and she saw I could take it. I'm sure she was interested to see if I could take that kind of thing".
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