Petals

@Samuel Garcia I think Leo didn't talk about states. but I think you are right in saying that the waking state and the deep sleep state are both states and they are therefore both temporal and limited and are both seemingly limitations. but that which underlies all states is what is important. that is you. and you are indeed there in deep sleep. but not the you that arises in the morning and subsides in the evening - that you is temporal, too - but the you that is the Self. that's at least what Ramana Maharshi would say. http://ramana-talk-mailer.appspot.com/read?post_name=Talk&index=609 "For the Self is Pure Consciousness. No one can ever be away from the Self."

Is anyone here familiar with the Pathwork Lectures? what do you think about them? https://pathwork.org/lecture-categories/pathwork-lectures-1996-ed/

@Mafortu it makes one wonder, but messenger and message can and maybe must be distinguished. no messenger is perfect. I'm not trying to defend the Ra material, it's just sth to keep in mind.

the following is (just) metaphysical speculation. Leo made clear in another thread that 'Will' is the case and that Consciousness is Will. Will seems to be the attribute of a 'person'. I have recently come across a few sources which seem to say that God is a 'Person' (of course not in the sense that we think, while our personhood might be a reflection of God's Personhood) whereas before I had the idea that it was not, just undefined and 'enlightenment' would be the 'merging' with that Undefined/Undefinable. As an example - Stephen Jourdain. He is somebody who openly says in the same book from which I quote that he is God. Quote: "My story isn't that of a fusion into a great, anonymous mass, but that of the birth of a new person. It must be well-understood: A spiritual person, an entity without either features nor contours yet definitely a person." What do you think/understand about this? especially @Leo Gura and others who have had direct experience.

@Nak Khid yes, could be that Ralston thought that his personal will is meant. then of course he must disagree. @Leo Gura thank you. an absence of Will would also seem to not make much sense. how could blind and undirected 'force' make/imagine this intricate universe?

Leo often mentions Will if I am not mistaken. E.g. in the mail to Ralston he writes "are you conscious that your will creates the entire Universe?". And Ralston answers "there is no will". The Will is also big in Christianity - "Thy Will be done". what does 'Will' mean precisely? do you have any direct experiences which can clarify this word or why Ralston denies its existence?

@WellbeingSeeker if you are looking for an account of the spirit realm in the Christian context, I recommend you google 'Emanuel Swedenborg'.

came across this Talk with Ramana Maharshi (28) just now actually looking for sth else. maybe it explains the discrepancy between Leo and Ralston. I don't know. D.: Why then is samsara - creation and manifestation as finitised - so full of sorrow and evil? M.: God’s will! D.: Why does God will it so? M.: It is inscrutable. No motive can be attributed to that Power - no desire, no end to achieve can be asserted of that one Infinite, All-wise and All-powerful Being. God is untouched by activities, which take place in His presence; compare the sun and the world activities. There is no meaning in attributing responsibility and motive to the One before it becomes many. But God’s will for the prescribed course of events is a good solution of the free-will problem (vexata quaestio). If the mind is restless on account of a sense of the imperfect and unsatisfactory character of what befalls us or what is committed or omitted by us, then it is wise to drop the sense of responsibility and free-will by regarding ourselves as the ordained instruments of the All-wise and All-powerful, to do and suffer as He pleases. He carries all burdens and gives us peace.

Hesychasm: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hesychasm has Emanuel Swedenborg already been mentioned? https://swedenborg.com/

Dream-consciousness, characteristically, has a quality which may be called 'blurred' or 'smudged'. It is quite lacking in crystalline sharpness or the quality of precision. The logical capacity is weak in the dreaming states. There is also a lack of firmness of will. The dreamer floats along in his consciousness, instead of being an achiever in it. He may dream in terms of ideality and beauty and be highly freed from the gross and the sensual, but the dreamer, as such, lacks character and strength. On the whole, his equipment is peculiarly poor for breaking from bondage to subject-object consciousness. He may be a good man and earn long periods of dreamlike bliss, but all this is less than the Liberated State. So, all in all, it should be quite obvious that for him who would attain the Higher Consciousness, one of the first necessities is the mastering of dreaming tendencies. To effect this mastery, there are several useful disciplines that can be devised, all of which cultivate the qualities that are the opposite of the dream-like consciousness. Thus, all activities that require a strong, positive, and incisive use of the mind, and all will-directed efforts, particularly if in directions that are more or less distasteful, are highly helpful. Strong intellectuality affords one of the best resistances to the dream-like state. Its danger is that it may develop egoism to such a degree that it becomes a serious barrier. But my judgement would be that it is easier to master an overly developed egoism - for here we have strength to work with - than it is to build the necessary strength in the too dreamy consciousness. So I should place somnambulism, rather than egoism and evil, as the first among the problems that must be mastered in this humanity if it is to progress toward Liberation. End. I just thought all this fits so well with Gurdjieff's ideas that it is worth sharing here.

(...) Those men who have not mastered cross-correlation while still embodied go into a state of essential sleep after death. Sooner or later they have a kind of experience in a dream-like consciousness, and these states constitute the ordinary heaven worlds, when they are of the better sort. The dream is a continuation of consciousness in the subject-object sense, but in the heavenly worlds the quality is entirely blissful. There is practically no opportunity for the exercise of discrimination in such states. It is the contrast of pain and joy, united with their appropriate causes, that tends to shock the dreaming consciousness into wakefulness. This contrasting condition is found in ordinary earth-life, and thus constitutes an important part of the reason why the vital determinative steps can be taken only here. Dreaminess is the great barrier. But most of haman consciousness even in this world is in a sort of waking-dreaming or somnambulistic state. However, we have here the instruments that can shock to wakefulness, while such is not the case in the after-death states of the ordinary individual. Unquestionably, pain is one of the very greatest of these instruments, and thus is much less an evil than a beneficient agent. The more I have studied the problem, the more I have become convinced that it has been a great mistake to concentrate so much attention upon evil. The real difficulty is the almost universal somnamnulism in which men pass the bulk of their lives, some spending many lives without leaving that state at all. It is, in effect, an hypnotic sleep, and the real problem of religion is not the saving of human souls from evil but a dehypnotising of the mind. FMW goes on to recommend the practice of lucid dreaming to achieve 'cross-correlation'. (...) the dream-state casts a glamour, which may be painful or pleasant, but in any case tends to produce a drug-like effect both upon the will and the reason. In addition to drugs, the light of the moon often produces a somewhat similar effect. The hypnotic state is a dream-state par excellence. This consciousness has the property of possessing a man, instead of the individual possessing and commanding it. It tends to lead him away from the decisions made in the light of dear and discriminating judgement. It is very characteristic of the consciousness found in psychological crowds and affords the reason why the control of crowd-consciousness is effected most successfully by psychological devices rather than by appeal to rational judgement. I will continue later. He makes some more interesting points.

I've found something in Franklin Merrell-Wolff's 'Experience and Philosophy'. It is pretty much congruent with Gurdjieff and I find it very well written. But he also puts it into the context of Liberation. FMW is not connected with the 'Work' in any way. I recommend reading it. This is the first part: Now, we come to a point of the highest practical importance. If a man, while embodied, has not learned to integrate consciously the embodied with the disembodied levels of percipience, then so far as the personal consciousness is concerned, death involves entering a state like dreamless sleep. In the higher sense, it is not an unconscious state, but it is unconscious for the personal man, except that he may experience a sort of dreaming consciousness apparently constructed along the formal lines of his embodied experience. Let the reader keep it well in mind that this is not a matter of an arbitrary or imaginative eschatology but, rather, of a necessity that must be clear from purely epistemological considerations. The point is simply this: If a conscious being has integrated self-consciousness in a given kind of complex mode, such as the 'five-sense' perceptive consciousness of man, and if it is familiar with no other mode of consciousness, then if it is suddenly severed from that mode and thrust into one utterly different, no matter how bright the Light of the latter may be, it will seem to this being as unconsciousness. After a time self-consciousness may awaken to function in the new mode, but there will be no basis for recognizing the new entity as being the same individual who experienced in terms of the former mode. This is a radical interruption of the continuity of self-consciousness, and, while in the Higher or Spritual sense, Consciousness per se has not ceased, yet the individual, as individual, has proved to be no more than a mortal being. Actually, nature guarantees man no more than this. But he may by his own self-induced effort and by aid of Awakened Men achieve continuity of self-consious or individualized consciousness. This is acquired or conditional immortality and constitutes an important part of the significance of Cosmic Consciousness. The crux of the whole problem in achieving individualized immortality is the learning to integrate while still embodied the outer and inner levels of percipience. This is, in fact, the mystic process symbolized by the squaring of the circle. The relationship between the square and the circle is incommensurable, and this means that 'circular' relationships or values are not comprehensible in 'square' terms. Embodied man is a square while the Inner Man is a circle. The mass of human beings shift from level to level through unconsciousness, and thus in these cases the one level is to the other like dreamless sleep. The two states are discrete instead of continuous, and, therefore, we are faced with a condition where we have, as it were, two distinct men instead of one self-conscious Being. The circle is birthless and deathless and consequently immortal, but the square is generated in time and in the course of time subject to dissolution. But by 'squaring' the circle, or more correctly by 'circularizing' the square, the latter kind of consciousness is taken up and blended with the immortal Consciousness of the circle. This gives to the individual consciousness immortality. It should be clear that the cross-transference in sleep or during the trance state is not enough. Man must win the power to be awake here and There at the same time. Once he has done this, even though the cross-correlation were achieved for but one moment in a given lifetime, he has mastered death and is immortal in the acquired sense. Now, when a man has succeeded in 'circularizing' the square, he has shifted his center of self-identity to the circle and thus has really died while remaining in the physical body. Consequently, while moving in the world he has become One who is not of the world. I will continue tomorrow.

@Zigzag Idiot thank you. I will take a look at the third series.

I've just read the last chapter (only that chapter) of 'Beelzebub's Tales to his Grandson' called 'From the Author'. in it there is a lecture called 'Lecture Number One - The Variety, according to Law, of the Manifestations of Human Individuality' (last read in New York, January 1924). it was quite good, so I am wondering, are there more of these lectures? it seems to be not an oral lecture by Gurdjieff but sth that was written by him and then read out loud to the students.

Gurdjieff himself said that you should not believe him. you need to verify stuff for yourself. of course you first need to be openminded enough to take things on as a hypothesis and then test them. so what's 'constructive' or not is for you to decide. apart from that I think Gurdjieff is not about 'self-improvement'. I am not an expert, just (currently) interested in Gurdjieff. there is a thread in this sub forum about Gurdjieff.

@Leo Gura apropos books, do you think about updating the book list in the future? maybe one last time?

look at that! (or better - listen to that.) started 2 years ago and last update just yesterday. channel name 'invite the light'. Nicoll's commentaries as audio.

'heard from...' is how it begins. say the following until it sinks in: 'I don't know, I don't know, I don't know...' that's all you have on that topic.

@Zigzag Idiot thank you.

@Chintan desai not wanting to be reborn is a typical Hindu thing. that's not a cult thing. be careful not to think that the truth is somewhere out there in cults and practices and the changing world. if it was, then it would not be worth much, would it? even if you get reborn ignorant, what could you do about it now? trust that what you do now matters and do your best, you have no other option anyway.

this seems to me to be a very good and important post. http://zenyogagurdjieff.blogspot.com/2013/07/will-and-reality-of-being.html

"The cause of this serious misconception was the disappearance from the common presence of your favorites of the possibility of the crystallization in them of those factors which actualize 'logical mentation' in three-brained beings. "And since they lack this 'logical mentation,' all of them, almost without exception, accept the statements of certain candidate hasnamusses affirming that they can obtain 'something' very beneficial for themselves through 'sport', and now believing these assertions with all their presence, and in the hope of obtaining this benefit, they give themselves up entirely to this sport. "None of these unfortunates know, or probably will ever realize, not only that this maleficent 'sport' of theirs brings them nothing beneficial but that, as I have just told you, owing to this sport alone, they shorten still further the duration of their existence, already sufficiently trifling without this." from 'Beelzebub's Tales to his Grandson' (Gurdjieff) read that just yesterday, that's why I'm posting it. on the other hand, look at that slow motion of the first goal. I get goosebumps looking at it. 'poetry in motion' as somebody said.

G's voice if you go on youtube, you can read along in the video's description. it's called 'Mr Gurdjieff recorded christmas 1948'. I've seen that @Zigzag Idiot has already posted it. I'll just leave it here.