In Search of the Miraculous
“There is an Eastern tale which speaks about a very rich magician who had a great many sheep… The sheep…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…that they were immortal and…the magician was a good master who loved his flock… (A)nd…if anything at all were going to happen to them…they had no need to think about it. Further, the magician suggested to his sheep that they were not sheep at all… (T)hey were lions…eagles…men, and…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.
“In so-called ‘occult’ literature you have probably met with the expression ‘Kundalini’… (O)ccultists have…completely altered its meaning, and from a very dangerous and terrible thing have made something to be hoped for, and to be awaited as some blessing.
“In reality Kundalini is the power of imagination, the power of fantasy, which takes the place of a real function. When a man dreams instead of acting, when his dreams take the place of reality…it is the force of Kundalini acting in him. Kundalini can act in all centers, and with its help all the centers can be satisfied with the imaginary instead of the real. A sheep which considers itself a lion or a magician lives under the power of Kundalini.
“Kundalini is a force put into men in order to keep them in their present state. If men could really see their true position and could understand all the horror of it, they would be unable to remain where they are even for one second. They would begin to seek a way out, and they would quickly find it, because there is a way out; but men fail to see it simply because they are hypnotized… —Chapter 11
Toward Awakening —Jean Vaysse
…(T)he force and the attraction of imagination, which keeps (men) in this state of hypnosis, prevents them from seeing what Gurdjieff calls the “terror of their situation.” —Awakening to oneself and obstacles to awakening
…This kind of imagination is in no way that creative faculty rightly regarded as of incalculable worth. It is in fact pernicious, merely a degenerate caricature of a higher faculty, that of real creative imagination, or conscious prefiguration, in conformity with an objective knowledge…which ordinary man does not possess… —The conditions, means and significance of real self-observation
Gurdjieff’s Emissary in New York:
Talks and Lectures with A.R. Orage 1924-1931
Orage..suggests that it would be…wise…to spend a half hour, or…ten minutes…or as much time and energy as possible each day, in…acts of constructive imagination… So that those ideas which we can now only speak of in words would be realized…
…Orage spoke of: (Trying)… to envisage the universe, as stated by Gurdjieff, to consist of a series of related planets, satellites, etc.—the moon, subordinate to the earth, the earth to the sun, the sun to the milky way, etc., and each of these places inhabited by various types of three centered beings…
(And)…The organism, do, re, mi, is played on by nature, moon and planets. But sol, la, si, the “I” is played on by a higher, a super-nature, the sun and the milky way. This will help us to relate ourselves to the cosmic struggle. To realize that every step we take towards constructive imagination, etc., real thought, draws up towards the sun; every identification with subjective emotion etc., is pull towards the moon. We are constantly in the midst of this combat. —Monday, 28 December 1925
Make this an effort in concrete imagination—while we sit here there are two thousand million people on the planet, being born and dying at the rate of one every three seconds. Every moment of our day is a present moment for everyone else. Every disease possible to man is…being suffered, somewhere at this time. No one can have an experience that has not been experienced by someone a moment before us, or a moment after.
There is no unique accident… There is no unique experience. There is no unique being…
Each individual is a cell in total humanity… (T)urn your attention to the one cell in the human organism which happens to bear your name and say: “there is one being in the universe that I can turn my attention to and say, ‘I am responsible for that cell'” —Monday, 2 December 1929
The Reality of Being
I need to learn to recognize and separate the real “I” from the imagination of myself…
This imagination of “I . . . me” lies at the heart of my usual sense of self, the ego, and all the movements of my inner life go to protect it… The things that we do are not chosen because we like to do them, but because we thereby affirm and assure our imagined “I.” …(A)nd this imagined “I” desires, fights, compares and judges all the time. It wants to be the first, it wants to be recognized, admired and respected, and make its force and power felt…
Do I…really see it at the moment in each action, when I work, when I eat, when I speak with another person? Can I be aware of my wish to be “someone,” and my way of always comparing myself to another? If I see it, I can experience the wish to liberate myself from it, and also see why I wish to liberate myself… —#72. The imagination of myself