Theos-Talk Archives (January 2008 Message tt00228)

A recent post I received on another forum prompted me to relook at Gurdgieff/Ouspensky teachings, and I found the following to be insightful.
   
  Gurdgieff starts by saying that if knowledge is given to a lot of people, the knowledge is spread too thinly and no one benefits.  "If knowledge is given to all, nobody will get any.  If it is preserved among a few, each will receive not only enought to keep, but to increase, what he receives.  At first glance this theory seems very unjust, since the position of those who are, so to speak, denied knowledge in order that others receive a greater sharea appears to be very sad and undeservedly harder than it ought to be.  Actually, however this is not so at all; and in the distribution of knowledge there is not the slightest injustice."
   
  "the fact is that the enormous majority of people do not want any knowledge whatsoever, they refuse their share of it and do not even take the the ration alloted to them, in the general distribution, for the purposes of life.  This is particularly evident in times of mass madness such as wars, revolutions, and so on, when men suddenly seem to lose even the small amount of common sense they had and turn into complete automatons, giving themselves over to wholesale destruction in vast numbers, in other words even losing the instinct of self preservation.  Owing to this, enormous quantities of knowledge remain, so to speak, unclaimed and can be distributed among those who realize its value.  "
   
  "There is nothing unjust in this, because those who receive knowledge take nothing that belongs to others, deprive others of nothing; they take only what others have rejected as useless and what would in any case be lost if they did not take it."
   
  "There are periods in the life of humanity, which generally coincide with the beginning of the fall of cultures and civilizations, when the masses irretrievably lose their reason and begin to destroy everything that has been created by centuries and millenniums of culture.  Such periods of mass madness, often coinciding with geoogical cataclysms, climatic changes, and similar phenomena of a planetary character, release a very great quantity of the matter of knowledge.  Thus the work of collecting scattered matter of knowledge frequently coincides with the beginning of the destruction and fall of cultures and civilizations."
   
   
   
  Cass:  Those that are developing at the same time, their three lower bodies, physical, astral and mental through their Master consciousness (4th Body Causal) the knowledge, although the same, is viewed from a totally different aspect.  So in effect, knowledge or truth is different for each man, and perhaps those who are developing their Master consciousness (an individuality dominating the physical body and its desires)intuit the teaching as a personal truth for themselves.  Those that operate through the lower bodies, the personality (discordant and contradictory) will of course have a different slant on it.  I am just musing here, and my intention is not to divide into "them" and 'Us" but Christianity would not have been able to get such a grip on Monads that were operating through their own individual "I" Master. different from the Man who functions through his lower three bodies.  "On the fourth way a man must satisfy himself of the truth of what he is told.  And
 until he is satisfied he must do nothing.
   
  In conclusion, "Those who possess this knowledge are doing everything they can to transmit and communicate it to the greatest possible number of people, to facilitate people's approach to it and enable them to prepare themselves to receive the truth.
   
  Looking forward to responses.
   
  Cass
   
  igel_healy <nigelhealy@hotmail.com> wrote:
          Hi Nigel C,
I think this is a very important point you make here: 
"The use of "personal" experience as our ultimate 
determinant for that which is "right" or "wrong" can be 
a highly flawed process."

Cass and I have mentioned in recent postings 
experiencing an instant affinity with particular 
teachings/philosophies, which may be a reconnecting 
with the Ancient Wisdom - or, indeed, may be 
something else. It is always worth examining the nature 
of these experiences, especially if there is an emotional 
aspect attached to the experience. Our personality loves 
to feel 'nice' and of course 'right' about these matters.
Socrates was spot on when he talked about the futility 
of the unexamined life.

Thank you Nigel for your insightful postings recently, 
they keep one on one's toes!

Kind regards,

Nigel H

--- In theos-talk@yahoogroups.com, "nhcareyta" <nhcareyta@...> wrote:
>
> The use of "personal" experience as our ultimate determinant for 
> that which is "right" or "wrong" can be a highly flawed process.
> 
> After all, how much and which part of our self makes these 
> determinations? More often than not, isn't it our heavily programmed, 
> habit conditioned personality, founded in its inherited and acquired 
> fears, preferences, attachments and identifications? 
> To continually insist on ourselves and our experience to be our final 
> arbiter, can in itself be just another strong dogma, one perhaps 
> lacking humility and potentially possessing not an inconsiderable 
> amount of fear-based pride.
> 
> How are we to approach the works of Einstein, Heisenberg, Bohr or 
> Pauli, each giants in their field? Yes, they made mistakes, but are 
> we to diminish or even devalue the profundity of their pronouncements 
> simply because we have not experienced or perhaps even understood for 
> ourselves their mental discoveries? Are we even to consider ourselves 
> on an equal footing, insisting that we will accept nothing they have 
> written and proven until we "discover" or "experience" it for 
> ourselves?
> 
> Of course we need guard against blindly following another's 
> pronouncements and we need keep open our mind for new discoveries and 
> new ways of looking at things. In potential we are told we each have 
> unlimited capacities. But let us not presume from our programmed, 
> possibly arrogant, mundane mind that we are all equal in mental and 
> spiritual functioning at this point in time.
> 
> Madame Blavatsky and her teachers maintained an age-old tradition, 
> that of endeavouring to bring the inexpressible truths of life into 
> the vernacular and mental culture of the day. We are told 
> the "unthinkable and unspeakable" cannot be written or spoken, 
> therefore a structure is erected by mental, and in this case, 
> spiritual giants in an attempt to ferry us to the "other shore." It 
> is available for us to accept or reject; it is for us to choose our 
> direction and method; it is for us to do the paddling; it is even for 
> us to build the boat. What they have done is provide what some 
> empiricists might consider a less than perfectly described schematic, 
> which however, with deep study and continued application might become 
> apparent to us, and which may indeed assist us in our attempts to 
> uncover the actual process and purpose of life in this dimension of 
> existence.
> 
> If we cannot, or do not wish to recognise that Madame Blavatsky and 
> her teachers possessed extraordinary and demonstrable fore-knowledge, 
> knowledge and occult abilities, then that is our choice. If we choose 
> to focus on what we believe or perceive to be shortcomings, that too 
> we are free to do. Were they absolutely accurate and correct in all 
> they said and did? Are there other traditions which may work for the 
> same "type" of western-minded person? Perhaps or perhaps not, the 
> empirical western mind's clamouring for dotted i's and crossed t's 
> possibly blinding us from that which truly is. But to consider some 
> of those who followed in their name to have equal credibility in this 
> field of expertise is a matter for considerable debate. To consider 
> ourselves as having equal credibility, from our personal experience, 
> is perhaps just a little presumptuous?
> 
> Nigel C
>



                         

       
---------------------------------
Looking for last minute shopping deals?  Find them fast with Yahoo! Search.

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]