Questions and Responses:
C: When I try to observe my thought I notice another thought that separates itself from the first. But, when I am in between, I don’t know to what extent my experience of these two things is subjective…I don’t know what’s happening because when I begin to think I become literary. I would like to understand more precisely what I have discovered.
Mr. G: That’s simple. You usually think with your head, with your brain, When you think with your brain, your thought is separate from you, you are nothing but a man in thought.
Sometimes your feeling takes part and this is already another thing. That makes two people together, it is no longer one person who thinks, there are now two people. If you have already been able to live like that try again to return to it. Try to think with the help, with the participation of your feeling. When your feeling takes part this is a new state for you. This newness is desirable. Do this exercise often. When you think, feel what you think. When you are accustomed to connecting these two you will be able to add the sensation. Then you will be able to think with your three centers. This is the thought of a real man.
The Reality of Being
# 28 – Beyond our Usual Consciousness
“We seek something that is beyond the world of our usual consciousness, our usual thoughts and feelings. We think of truth, of reality, as if it were fixed, a point that we should find a way to approach. But reality is not fixed. It is alive. It cannot be measured by anything we know. It can be approached only by a thought that is entirely free—free of everything, every expectation, every fear—a thought without movement, completely silent, a thought that knows only itself. The thought that knows only itself lives in the present moment. In this moment, here, now, it has nothing to expect, nothing to lose. It is “consciousness of being”—not being like this or like that—only of being. It is.
Here we discover the source of thinking. We see that the division between the observer and the observed is at the origin of our thought. The observer is grounded in memory, that which knows from past experience. It looks, thinks and acts from memory. This separation into observer and observed does not touch reality, it consolidates the ego. But when the observer is the observed—when the thinking is the experience—then there is no more thought. There is a state of tranquillity in which an impression can be received as new, as with little children. The eyes clearly receive the image from outside, but there is no observer perceiving, no mental processing.
In order to experience this unified state without an observer, it is necessary to pass through my usual state and to see that it is not enough. So long as my thought tracks what I am doing and experiencing, judging it in one way or another, I remain in the realm of my limited consciousness. I remain under the influence of my ordinary “I.” What is important is to see this division between observer and observed, to see the thought creating the separation. It is in seeing this that I become free of its authority and open to another reality.
The Meaning of Life —Gurdjieff
(originally read to us as “Pure and Impure Emotions”)
What is the meaning of life? There are many opinions on this subject. “They” say: it is for the perfecting of self, or the sacrifice of self, or a preparation for future life, or an improvement of humanity, or even that it has no meaning at all. All these opinions look for the meaning of life outside of life itself. One must look inside oneself. The true sense of life is “connaissance.” All life, all experience leads to “connaissance.”
The world is everything existing. Man, in becoming conscious, becomes conscious of himself and of the world of which he is a part. The function of consciousness is to become aware of this, and its existence. One’s relation with oneself and with the world—this is “connaissance,” or knowledge. All the elements of the psyche of man—perceptions, sensations, conceptions, ideas, emotions, creation—are instruments of knowledge. All emotions, from the simplest to the most complicated—religious, moral, artistic—all are instruments of knowledge.
According to the theory of the “struggle for existence,” it is the survival of the fittest which creates intellect and emotions, and these serve life. In fact these are not accidental; they play a role in creation and are the product of an intelligence of which we know nothing, and they lead to knowledge. But we do not discern the presence of the rational in phenomena and in the laws of life. We study a part and not the whole. When we understand that each life is a manifestation of a part of the whole, the possibility of understanding will open up.
To understand the rationality of the whole, it is necessary to understand the character of all, and all its functions. The function of man is knowledge; but if one does not understand man as a whole, one will not understand his function.
Our separate lives are the manifestation of some large entity… Our lives have no other sense than the process by which we acquire knowledge. The process of the acquisition of knowledge is not only by intellect but by the whole organism and organization of life, culture, civilization. And, we acquire the knowledge of what we deserve to know.
Everyone agrees that the aim of intellect is knowledge. We are not clear about our emotions: joy, anger, jealousy, pleasure, artistic creation; we do not see that all activity, all emotions, serve knowledge….
We oppose emotion and reason. We speak of cold reason, of intellect superior to emotion. This is an error in definition. Intellect taken as a whole is also emotion.
In man the growth of conscience consists in the growth of the intellect and the growth of superior emotions which accompany it (aesthetic, religious, moral); in growing they become more intellectual and at the same time, the intellect assimilates the emotions. “Spirituality” is a fusion of intellect with superior emotions.
A new order of receptivity comes from the union of intellect and superior emotions, but is not created by them… Man today understands much with intellect, but also with sentiments. With each sentiment man understands something which he could not understand without its aid. If we think that emotions serve life and not knowledge, we will never understand emotions. There are things and relations which can only be understood emotionally, and only with certain emotions. One must love in order to understand someone who loves. Etc.
Changing emotions are obstacles to the acquisition of a permanent “I.” The sign of growth of emotion is the liberation from the personal element. Personal emotion fools, is partial, unjust. Greater knowledge is in proportion to fewer personal elements. The problem is to feel impersonally. Not all emotions are easily freed of the personal. Certain ones by their nature corrupt, separate. Others, like love, lead man from the material to the miraculous.
It is current to talk about “pure” and “impure” emotions; but we do not know how to define their difference. A pure emotion is one which is not mixed, which never seeks personal profit. An impure emotion is always mixed, it is never one; it is mixed with personal profit, with personal elements; it has sediments of other emotions. An impure emotion does not give knowledge, or gives only confused knowledge. It sheds no light. (We are considering impure sentiments from the point of view generally called “moral.”)
Each emotion can be pure or impure; that is, mixed or unmixed. Jealousy, envy, love of country, fear—these can be pure feelings. There is even a sensuality which can be pure—as that of the Song of Songs, which gives the pulse of the physical movement of the universe.
As soon as one wishes to draw a personal profit from his activity, the sentiment becomes impure. That is what happens to our most elevated feelings—love., faith, charity. They become mixed with personal elements; they become impure.
And the purity of sentiment is not confined to goodness and gentleness. We see bate and violence in the gesture of’ Christ when be drives the money-changers’ out of the temple. Hate can be a pure feeling. But it must have nothing personal attached to it.
All creation, all forms of art, were originally instruments of knowledge.
Questions and Answers:
Again from Mr. G: You usually think with your head, with your brain, When you think with your brain, your thought is separate from you, you are nothing but a man in thought.
Sometimes your feeling takes part and this is already another thing. That makes two people together, it is no longer one person who thinks, there are now two people. If you have already been able to live like that try again to return to it. Try to think with the help, with the participation of your feeling. When your feeling takes part this is a new state for you. This newness is desirable. Do this exercise often. When you think, feel what you think. When you are accustomed to connecting these two you will be able to add the sensation. Then you will be able to think with your three centers. This is the thought of a real man.