A NORMAL BEING WISHES TO LIVE FOREVER

A NORMAL BEING WISHES TO LIVE FOREVER

- G. I. GURDJIEFF

A normal being wishes to live forever.  A normal man is one who not only has actualized his inherited potentialities, but has freed himself from his subjectivity

This wish to live constitutes a being.  Once being alive there is no choice, we must live forever.

Your powers are to actualize, to be aware of your presence. This is your money in the bank, your cash, your earning ability.

Next to awareness, the most important thing is Time.  The  flow of time through us gives us our chance to extract what we can.  Time is a three-fold stream, passing through our three centers.  We fish in this stream, what we catch is ours, what we don't is gone.  Time does not wait for us to catch all in the stream, if we catch enough, we have enough to create the three bodies, and become enduring.

Time is the sum of our potential experience, the totality of our possible experiences.  We live our experiences successively, this is the first dimension of time.

To be able to live experiences simultaneously is adding another or second dimension of time.

To be aware of this simultaneity is called solid Time, or the third dimension of Time.

I beg you, before starting on this journey to question yourself. You are plunging into the dark; here is a little lamp; I show you how to rub it; but make sure you know how to rub it.

Suffering is the price of endlessness.

Conscious labor consists of having an objective in life, as a LIFE aim, an Aim which can be pursued the whole of your life.  It does not depend on the vicissitudes of life.  It is the aim for which you took the trouble to be born.  You are an  being if you keep this aim.

If you keep this aim through this life you will have an aim strong enough to persist after this life, an aim big enough to persist through an immortal existence.

Transmission by Mme Salzmann

From a meeting with Madame de Salzmann




Thursday March 1




Transmission




The concept I have of transmission is of knowledge passed from someone to someone else.  This concept is so strong, or, rather, my belief or unconscious acceptance of it is so strong, that even though a possible new understanding has been glimpsed it cannot be altered without very strongly experienced proof.  If transmission were a sort of exchange of substances along a route or channel existing between the one transmitting and the one transmitted to, it would mean that something would flow in two opposite directions. If real change of understanding is possible it would mean that the level of both the giver and receiver would change, the receiver giving and the giver receiving.




To begin with, if I am in the position of transmitter, a change is needed in my state.  If I am searching for a more active attention, freer to listen, freer from associations connected with and my reactions to what I hear, there could be a greater freedom to explore the question with the questioner—to go into it more deeply with him, without being caught in it from outside, as it were.  If my attention is more actively engaged there could be a participation in the whole exchange that would permit the exchange to flow in two directions, and activate the ‘hearer’ in both the giver and the receiver.




If this active attention is not being searched for, if I hear the question passively with my ordinary attention, I will reply passively and nothing can be transmitted, no matter how clever my words or how strong my emotional force. Instead of a new quality of attention and receptivity, permitting the flow of new knowledge both ways, there is a one-sided relationship of dependence, already existing and now strengthened.  Instead of an increase in activity and freedom, a mutually harmful attitude of dependence is more and more fixed.




J. de S.  (remembered impressions)




There is a need that this is shared. The need to understand more.  With what do I begin?  If I am not searching for myself at that very moment I am not in touch with my need.  The question is the same for both. I enter with him into the search.




C.F. said he felt it was a question of attention which was needed.




J. de S.
Attention for what ?




Not only do I not bring attention to myself, to be in touch with my question, but even if I reach this sometimes, there is no focus or direction in the sense of a progressive process—a step by step.  My attention does not follow according to a line of a possible new understanding.  I do not understand this.  So how can I follow it?  If one of Gurdjieff’s ideas could be the guideline, for instance, the idea of sleep and awakening, how do I exchange actively about this?  Can it be real at that moment?




If I experience a change in my own state at that moment, if I am aware of my being pulled to the outside while seeing it, my interest in exchanging, for instance, about the power of sleep or the weakness of attention, become acute.  By exchanging about this I can strengthen my own experience.  If I am pulled into my words about it I leave the experience and begin to lie. This is the process of sleep and the struggle to awaken.




It is the same if I take the idea of man as a three-centered being. If I am not trying to find a relationship between at least two of my centers, how can the structure of man be discussed from this standpoint?  If my question is concerned with the relationship between centers—how to become more whole—I can share this with them, not in words, but because I need to understand more for myself.  Because of my need, I can hear better what their need is, whether for more thinking, more feeling, more sensing.  If I am more aware of my own difficulty and my own lack at that moment, I can detect better their lack and from what part or center it comes.  I will know more what I need to know and so will he.




If we take the idea of self-observation, self-study, self-knowledge it is the same thing.  Unless I am engaged at the moment with the question of myself, if my attention is not turned toward myself, no inkling of the necessity of a change of state can be exchanged. And the usual habit of observing myself with my thinking apparatus or reacting to myself emotionally will be understood as self-observation.  If I need to learn more about what observation or seeing really is, if I suspect that real seeing or real observation is from the whole being (which I have scarcely ever experienced), I will need to be very quiet in order to be aware of what my actual situation is and accept what is there, and exchange and share from that place.

Task for 2012 - Post 1

Task for the year is for conscious speech and therefore also understand the law of association and the law of momentum.
The task would therefore be about conscious listening, then getting into the question or the same space as the person speaking and then responding if needed. Main work would be to be aware when Im being pulled outside or into associations.

"To begin with, if I am in the position of transmitter, a change is needed in my state.  If I am searching for a more active attention, freer to listen, freer from associations connected with and my reactions to what I hear, there could be a greater freedom to explore the question with the questioner—to go into it more deeply with him, without being caught in it from outside, as it were.  If my attention is more actively engaged there could be a participation in the whole exchange that would permit the exchange to flow in two directions, and activate the ‘hearer’ in both the giver and the receiver."

"If I experience a change in my own state at that moment, if I am aware of my being pulled to the outside while seeing it, my interest in exchanging, for instance, about the power of sleep or the weakness of attention, become acute.  By exchanging about this I can strengthen my own experience.  If I am pulled into my words about it I leave the experience and begin to lie. This is the process of sleep and the struggle to awaken."

A daily alarm at 4 pm and and end of the day stock take will allow me to watch my progress in training myself and to then teach this to others.