As should be obvious by now, I have always been a "seeker." One of the spiritual influences upon my life has been the unusual thoughts of one G.I. Gurdjieff.
Gurdjieff (1866-1949) was an Armenian-Greek/Turk? who propounded a certain gnostic teaching-part Sufi, part lord knows what else. He wrote a few books containing odd, abstruse ideas on many subjects that many very intelligent people believe to be sheer genius, but much of which is at odds with modern science.
His basic premise: Free will does not (normally) exist- Man is asleep, drunk, or hypnotized. Man is a machine, and has three minds, or centers. We progress via "shocks."
We are also dual creatures, bound by the Law of Three and Law of Seven.
"Essence" is distinguished from "personality." The goal to get back to essence, away from environmental conditioning.
The cosmos is an emanation of the "Ray of Creation," which is similar to a musical note or octave-we are bound by the multiple laws or scale of this mysterious ray. Ultimately, the universe is guided or operates via a trinitarian mechanism- dualism is moderated by a third principle, that of neutralism or the transitional.
By self-observing, we can break free from our mechanicalness. The Moon figures prominently in Gurdjieff's cosmology, in a way that I won't go into just now.
Sacred dance can liberate Man from his enslavement (whirling dervishes?). So can physical labor, the "stop" exercise, and guided intution. The goal is to 'wake up' to become free from the Law of Accident.
If we die without progressing "we will die like a dog"..we need to manufacture astral bodies while we are alive-we are born without any soul whatsoever, but immortality can be produced by great efforts (Alchemy?)
Gurdjieff was a colorful "rascal sage." (He drank heavily, seduced married women, was shot and seriously wounded on three separate occasions ...in his youth he traveled as far as Tibet and Ethiopia, in his quest for knowledge).
He and his followers fled the Russian revolution and settled near Istanbul, then Paris, where he taught and wrote- "Beelzebub's tales to his Grandson"...a story about a space alien in his ship on its way to a distant galaxy-the pilot takes time to explain 'humanity' to his grandson- this book was written from 1924-1931 (its an almost impossible read).
The American architect Frank Loyd Wright was a disciple.
When a chemist works to create a formula, whether or not he/she is moral or ethical has no bearing on the result. The same may be said for spirituality and many "Gurus"... you might be a transmitter of divine energy....but you might have a seriously flawed personality. (David Koresh is certainly discredited in the eyes of most Americans, yet didn't he have an argument for separatism? Didn't he have a thorough knowledge of, or insight into, scripture? If you study what Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh taught, you find that he was trying to get rid of our hang-ups. He deliberately rode around in dozens of Rolls Royces, not because he was a greedy pig- he was trying to shock greedy piggy Americans into examining their get-ahead capitalist lifestyle/society. He wanted us to see the absurdity of it all. The Bhagwan was a fraud, but he was a Holy one).
Spiritual leaders seem to be just along the edges of the genetic Bell curve, in the same way a gifted musician or artist is...Picasso and de Kooning made great art- but were they great moralists? Gurus might make great spiritual systems ...but they might be liars, cheats, and thieves. "God-intoxication" seems to be a side-effect of our genetic heritage, yet to me something more is afoot. My investigations of the subtle and sublime are not merely the musings of chemicals and neurons, dead matter. Thoughts and emotions cannot be totally reduced to brain tissue-something is wrong with the modern model of consciousness. Open a mans head and probe his brain with instruments or electricity, different parts of his brain when pricked or charged will make different parts of his body react- this lead to a belief in an extreme physicalism. But scientists missed the obvious- it was an OUTSIDE influence that manipulated the brain. Alien influences caused the body to react... there can be no reduction to dead materialism.
From atoms to cells to brain and then thoughts....how do you get thoughts from brain tissue? The idea that thoughts are merely a side-effect, or mysterious secretions of a certain level of material complexity... doesn't seem to be an adequate answer.
Gurdjieff (1866-1949) was an Armenian-Greek/Turk? who propounded a certain gnostic teaching-part Sufi, part lord knows what else. He wrote a few books containing odd, abstruse ideas on many subjects that many very intelligent people believe to be sheer genius, but much of which is at odds with modern science.
His basic premise: Free will does not (normally) exist- Man is asleep, drunk, or hypnotized. Man is a machine, and has three minds, or centers. We progress via "shocks."
We are also dual creatures, bound by the Law of Three and Law of Seven.
"Essence" is distinguished from "personality." The goal to get back to essence, away from environmental conditioning.
The cosmos is an emanation of the "Ray of Creation," which is similar to a musical note or octave-we are bound by the multiple laws or scale of this mysterious ray. Ultimately, the universe is guided or operates via a trinitarian mechanism- dualism is moderated by a third principle, that of neutralism or the transitional.
By self-observing, we can break free from our mechanicalness. The Moon figures prominently in Gurdjieff's cosmology, in a way that I won't go into just now.
Sacred dance can liberate Man from his enslavement (whirling dervishes?). So can physical labor, the "stop" exercise, and guided intution. The goal is to 'wake up' to become free from the Law of Accident.
If we die without progressing "we will die like a dog"..we need to manufacture astral bodies while we are alive-we are born without any soul whatsoever, but immortality can be produced by great efforts (Alchemy?)
Gurdjieff was a colorful "rascal sage." (He drank heavily, seduced married women, was shot and seriously wounded on three separate occasions ...in his youth he traveled as far as Tibet and Ethiopia, in his quest for knowledge).
He and his followers fled the Russian revolution and settled near Istanbul, then Paris, where he taught and wrote- "Beelzebub's tales to his Grandson"...a story about a space alien in his ship on its way to a distant galaxy-the pilot takes time to explain 'humanity' to his grandson- this book was written from 1924-1931 (its an almost impossible read).
The American architect Frank Loyd Wright was a disciple.
When a chemist works to create a formula, whether or not he/she is moral or ethical has no bearing on the result. The same may be said for spirituality and many "Gurus"... you might be a transmitter of divine energy....but you might have a seriously flawed personality. (David Koresh is certainly discredited in the eyes of most Americans, yet didn't he have an argument for separatism? Didn't he have a thorough knowledge of, or insight into, scripture? If you study what Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh taught, you find that he was trying to get rid of our hang-ups. He deliberately rode around in dozens of Rolls Royces, not because he was a greedy pig- he was trying to shock greedy piggy Americans into examining their get-ahead capitalist lifestyle/society. He wanted us to see the absurdity of it all. The Bhagwan was a fraud, but he was a Holy one).
Spiritual leaders seem to be just along the edges of the genetic Bell curve, in the same way a gifted musician or artist is...Picasso and de Kooning made great art- but were they great moralists? Gurus might make great spiritual systems ...but they might be liars, cheats, and thieves. "God-intoxication" seems to be a side-effect of our genetic heritage, yet to me something more is afoot. My investigations of the subtle and sublime are not merely the musings of chemicals and neurons, dead matter. Thoughts and emotions cannot be totally reduced to brain tissue-something is wrong with the modern model of consciousness. Open a mans head and probe his brain with instruments or electricity, different parts of his brain when pricked or charged will make different parts of his body react- this lead to a belief in an extreme physicalism. But scientists missed the obvious- it was an OUTSIDE influence that manipulated the brain. Alien influences caused the body to react... there can be no reduction to dead materialism.
From atoms to cells to brain and then thoughts....how do you get thoughts from brain tissue? The idea that thoughts are merely a side-effect, or mysterious secretions of a certain level of material complexity... doesn't seem to be an adequate answer.
posted by Zero at 1:05 PM
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