RM said he had been away but that he realised that he had been doing the EXERCISE. He equated it with Ramana Maharshi's teachings about choiceless awareness, and the point was you looked ahead of you but you made no choice.
Information for
Next Meeting
4 June 2017 at 9am
EXERCISE
READING
Disclaimer and Notes You just saw the overview, not anything specific. When he let go, just seeing the general shape of things, he became more aware of the circumstances around him. When he became more awake, he noticed the people around him were fast asleep.
L's experience was, that as he saw the person coming, it was like a cloud of thoughts approaching him. People's thoughts, and state of mind, were reflected in their gait. Either they would be walking fast, or dreamily, looking this way and that. It was like a dream walking towards him. As the person came closer he would stop being aware of the thoughts. He was aware just of the raw animal going past him, animated flesh. He also did it with dogs approaching - it was the same sensation for creatures.
The exercise made T realise that she did not usually look at people as they were coming towards her, and that she usually averted her eyes, particularly from men, and that she looked at everything else, the hedges, the flowers. So looking at the people coming along was quite daunting, and it felt weird, not looking at their face, because often she thought she looked at the face and then quickly looked away, just to check who was around her. So that woke her up to the ordinary action of walking along a street, and it had made her aware of a habitual action that she did, which she had not been aware of before.
"R"'s efforts were to receive an impression, and she found that she connected with how a person was inside herself, and sensed their posture and their tempo before looking at details, because we were working to remember ourselves, and it was easy to get lost in what we see. And remembering herself was sensing her body, and the seat of the feelings.
R said there were two ways. Either you engaged with that person, by looking at them, and catching their eye, or you avoided it, and objectified them. They became the object, and you became the observer, and you saw them encased within a role. RM had said that people were asleep. Of course they were asleep, they were caught up in their role, and the role of walking was a full-time occupation - thinking, and walking, encapsulated within their role as a pedestrian, detached from the surroundings.
J had conducted the exercise, including thinking about what he would think about after he conducted it, beforehand, and he found there wasn't too much distinction, in other words, what happened was anticipated. That may be because, as a failed novelist, one of the things he did was look at people and try to imagine what their stories were, when they may be in a semi-somnambulant state.
If he were to avert his eyes from their face, which was what the exercise asked, he found instead he was concentrating on either their clothes, or their gait, and trying to work out, in a not very detailed way, where that person, mentally, might be coming from. The other thing that happened, was that a hundred times a day, he saw people walking in the street, or in the tube. If you asked, after you had just got out of a tube ride, who you had seen, you probably couldn't remember, and the mere fact of concentrating just for an additional moment, on someone coming, not necessarily on their face, stamped them more clearly in one's recollection.
Responding to RM and R, D said he would like to state that he could not see how you could know what anybody else was thinking. You could not know if they were asleep or awake - full stop - because we did not even know what we were doing, half the time.
J said there was a presumption which was absolutely to be fought against - that you could not assume, from somebody's expression, or even their vacant expression, that they were either encapsulated in a role, or they were half asleep. People were thinking in their own worlds, but if you wanted to try and understand that, you could possibly penetrate to some mild degree, but to assume from that that you were awake and they were half-asleep - there was an unconscious superiority about this - and in this, he thought, was a slight danger.
GC said he had set the exercise, and the idea of the exercise was to possibly make people realise that we were dreaming, the observer was dreaming, and to look at the person - as the thoughts came, to realise the thoughts were there, and disregard the thoughts. But what seemed to be happening was that people were getting caught up in the dream because they were asleep, and the object of the exercise was to awake you, not to take you further back in to the mind. DM asked if it was a technique to wake yourself up? Were you judging that person? GC said that if you looked at somebody, your thoughts would arise about that person. Seeming is dreaming. You were dreaming, you were asleep. You were not observing them asleep. You were observing the fact that you, the observer, was actually asleep, and dreaming.
Responding to RM's contribution, RG asked how he knew that a person was asleep and did it make him, or us in general, by observing someone else, awake? Was it just the observation that made us awake if we noticed that somebody else was asleep? RM said that when you learn to be awake, you know when other people are asleep. RG asked him how he knew. RM said there was no question, you knew it.
L said that when he had stopped being swayed by his thoughts of what they might be thinking about, and why they were walking in that way, he also felt compassion towards this person he didn't know coming by him. Some people were happier than others. Some people were not happy. He also felt it towards animals. He liked the way Gurdjieff didn't talk about people and animals, rather he talked about bipeds and quadrupeds, beings of different kinds. For L, the exercise was more about compassion than about being awake or asleep, to which he thought compassion might be an extra dimension. He hoped we could become more awake, and perhaps a little bit more as well!
R said that looking at a person - whether they were asleep or awake - was that not a bit formatory? If you said, is he or isn't he?, you were putting yourself in a condition of sleep. The magic word sleep. Were we speaking about being hypnotised by one's own thoughts, by being drawn out of the environment into oneself? GC said this was the case, and the reasons for the exercise were to make you realise that you can't look at someone without going back to your agenda, and to be like the mirror, which sees everything, but doesn't take it in, but reflects it back.
J asked what were we now, were we conscious? How was what we were talking about now,
concentrating on one object that was common to us all, so different from the exercise we were conducting. When we were thinking about ourselves in this moment, were we doing what we were doing in the street, concentrating on an object, and the person there was also doing that, but not on the same object that we were communally discussing, it was his own object. Was there such a difference? In other words, were we asleep now?
GC said that the idea of the exercise was to realise that you could not watch a person without bringing your mind into a picture that you were watching. The mind is a good servant and a bad master. For him personally, the less mind there was for him, the better it was. RM asked where was the picture we were watching? adding, it could only be in the mind. GC said, if you looked at a white wall, you would see a white wall. Then you would start thinking, maybe you could put a picture there, another part needs touching up ... but it was just a white wall. You could imprint anything you like on to it, and the mind wants to imprint something on it all the time, and the object of the exercise was to make you realise that you can't look at the person without bringing yourself into the picture you were looking at, or the scene you were looking at, or the person you were looking at. DM asked if you would be able to tell if that person was asleep or awake. A asked why it was important to know if the other person was asleep. RM said it was not important to know that the other person was asleep, but it was important to you, for you to understand when you were asleep. "R" said that being more aware was bringing three centres together, including the physical sense of one's presence. GC said that this was an agenda she had had before this conversation, just as L's companssion had been an agenda he had had before this conversation. "R" said everybody had been starting their sentences with I think, or something to do with thoughts. GC said that thinking was the problem. He said that, for him, that was his agenda that encapsulated everything - we thought when we did not need to, and that was the problem.
The Meeting continued reading from Beelzebub's Tales, Chapter 23.
And all this will be quite in the order of things there.
Concerning the ‘scientific experiment’ itself, which they propose to carry out with the apes taken back from Africa, I can with certainty say beforehand, that at any rate the first part of it will without any doubt, succeed ‘wonderfully well.’
And it will succeed wonderfully well, because the apes themselves, as beings of what is called a ‘Terbelnian result,’ are already, owing to their nature, extremely fond of occupying themselves with ‘titillation’ and before the day is out, will no doubt participate in and greatly assist your favorites in this ‘scientific experiment’ of theirs.
As for those beings there who are going to carry out this ‘scientific experiment,’ and as for any benefit from it for the other three-brained beings there, it can all be pictured to oneself if one remembers the profoundly wise saying of our same honorable Mullah Nassr Eddin, in which he says: ‘Happy is that father whose son is even busy with murder and robbery, for he himself will then have no time to get accustomed to occupy himself with “titillation.”’
T said it was shocking that murder and robbery should be put above sexuality. She asked if it was taking to the extreme that it was better to be doing something in the world than not. R said the Mullah was saying that it was best to be active without fantasy. He cited the book Eros and Civilisation, which partly follows on Freud's thoughts on the tension between superego and instinct.
... Well then, my boy, when I left that system, I presented my famous observatory to him with everything in it, and in gratitude for this he promised to report every month, according to the time-calculation of the planet Mars, all the more important events occurring on the planets of that system.
... However, my boy, owing to this etherogram, I have wandered a long way from my original tale.
Let us go back to our former theme.
Well, then, upon this the fourth flight of mine to the planet Earth, our ship Occasion descended onto the sea called the ‘Red Sea.’
RM asked what he meant by etherogram.
T said it was like an email, or a text. "R" said it was like a news bulletin.
L said it was an interplanetary email system, which had not yet been developed, but they were working on it. The plan was to have one satellite going round Mars, and another going round the sun.
T liked the way Gurdjieff referred to distraction, when he said the etherogram had caused him to wander from his original tale.
... the beings of the Earth of that locality had devised a new system for observing other cosmic concentrations from their planet, and that they were then constructing what was required in order to carry it into effect; and also, as everybody there said, that the convenience and possibilities of this new system were excellent and until then unparalleled on the Earth.
... Although the observatory which interested me was not yet quite finished, nevertheless observations of the exterior visibility of cosmic concentrations could be made from it, and the results issuing from them and the reciprocal action of these results could be studied.
Those beings who were occupied with such observations and studies were called, at that period on the Earth, ‘Astrologers.’
But when afterwards that psychic disease of theirs called wiseacring became finally fixed there, owing to which these specialists of theirs also ‘shrivelled and shrank’ and became specialists only in giving names to remote cosmic concentrations, they came to be called ‘Astronomers’.
C said that astrologers were, from what Gurdjieff was saying, more important than astronomers, and that we were going off on the wrong track. IO said that astrologers have wisdom, and astronomers have knowledge. RM said that you could not understand the sea by labeling every wave.
Next Meeting
4 June 2017 at 9am
EXERCISE
READING
Disclaimer and Notes You just saw the overview, not anything specific. When he let go, just seeing the general shape of things, he became more aware of the circumstances around him. When he became more awake, he noticed the people around him were fast asleep.
L's experience was, that as he saw the person coming, it was like a cloud of thoughts approaching him. People's thoughts, and state of mind, were reflected in their gait. Either they would be walking fast, or dreamily, looking this way and that. It was like a dream walking towards him. As the person came closer he would stop being aware of the thoughts. He was aware just of the raw animal going past him, animated flesh. He also did it with dogs approaching - it was the same sensation for creatures.
|
EXERCISE
When you are walking along the road, and someone is coming towards you, look at them but not their face. When they come towards you, try to see what's in front of your eyes. When your mind starts judging, once you realise the thought has come, clear it and try to see the object that's coming towards you. |
"R"'s efforts were to receive an impression, and she found that she connected with how a person was inside herself, and sensed their posture and their tempo before looking at details, because we were working to remember ourselves, and it was easy to get lost in what we see. And remembering herself was sensing her body, and the seat of the feelings.
R said there were two ways. Either you engaged with that person, by looking at them, and catching their eye, or you avoided it, and objectified them. They became the object, and you became the observer, and you saw them encased within a role. RM had said that people were asleep. Of course they were asleep, they were caught up in their role, and the role of walking was a full-time occupation - thinking, and walking, encapsulated within their role as a pedestrian, detached from the surroundings.
J had conducted the exercise, including thinking about what he would think about after he conducted it, beforehand, and he found there wasn't too much distinction, in other words, what happened was anticipated. That may be because, as a failed novelist, one of the things he did was look at people and try to imagine what their stories were, when they may be in a semi-somnambulant state.
| Source: Rebecca Hendin at giphy.com |
Responding to RM and R, D said he would like to state that he could not see how you could know what anybody else was thinking. You could not know if they were asleep or awake - full stop - because we did not even know what we were doing, half the time.
J said there was a presumption which was absolutely to be fought against - that you could not assume, from somebody's expression, or even their vacant expression, that they were either encapsulated in a role, or they were half asleep. People were thinking in their own worlds, but if you wanted to try and understand that, you could possibly penetrate to some mild degree, but to assume from that that you were awake and they were half-asleep - there was an unconscious superiority about this - and in this, he thought, was a slight danger.
GC said he had set the exercise, and the idea of the exercise was to possibly make people realise that we were dreaming, the observer was dreaming, and to look at the person - as the thoughts came, to realise the thoughts were there, and disregard the thoughts. But what seemed to be happening was that people were getting caught up in the dream because they were asleep, and the object of the exercise was to awake you, not to take you further back in to the mind. DM asked if it was a technique to wake yourself up? Were you judging that person? GC said that if you looked at somebody, your thoughts would arise about that person. Seeming is dreaming. You were dreaming, you were asleep. You were not observing them asleep. You were observing the fact that you, the observer, was actually asleep, and dreaming.
Responding to RM's contribution, RG asked how he knew that a person was asleep and did it make him, or us in general, by observing someone else, awake? Was it just the observation that made us awake if we noticed that somebody else was asleep? RM said that when you learn to be awake, you know when other people are asleep. RG asked him how he knew. RM said there was no question, you knew it.
L said that when he had stopped being swayed by his thoughts of what they might be thinking about, and why they were walking in that way, he also felt compassion towards this person he didn't know coming by him. Some people were happier than others. Some people were not happy. He also felt it towards animals. He liked the way Gurdjieff didn't talk about people and animals, rather he talked about bipeds and quadrupeds, beings of different kinds. For L, the exercise was more about compassion than about being awake or asleep, to which he thought compassion might be an extra dimension. He hoped we could become more awake, and perhaps a little bit more as well!
R said that looking at a person - whether they were asleep or awake - was that not a bit formatory? If you said, is he or isn't he?, you were putting yourself in a condition of sleep. The magic word sleep. Were we speaking about being hypnotised by one's own thoughts, by being drawn out of the environment into oneself? GC said this was the case, and the reasons for the exercise were to make you realise that you can't look at someone without going back to your agenda, and to be like the mirror, which sees everything, but doesn't take it in, but reflects it back.
J asked what were we now, were we conscious? How was what we were talking about now,
Captain Pickard considers the issue of illusion.
GC said that the idea of the exercise was to realise that you could not watch a person without bringing your mind into a picture that you were watching. The mind is a good servant and a bad master. For him personally, the less mind there was for him, the better it was. RM asked where was the picture we were watching? adding, it could only be in the mind. GC said, if you looked at a white wall, you would see a white wall. Then you would start thinking, maybe you could put a picture there, another part needs touching up ... but it was just a white wall. You could imprint anything you like on to it, and the mind wants to imprint something on it all the time, and the object of the exercise was to make you realise that you can't look at the person without bringing yourself into the picture you were looking at, or the scene you were looking at, or the person you were looking at. DM asked if you would be able to tell if that person was asleep or awake. A asked why it was important to know if the other person was asleep. RM said it was not important to know that the other person was asleep, but it was important to you, for you to understand when you were asleep. "R" said that being more aware was bringing three centres together, including the physical sense of one's presence. GC said that this was an agenda she had had before this conversation, just as L's companssion had been an agenda he had had before this conversation. "R" said everybody had been starting their sentences with I think, or something to do with thoughts. GC said that thinking was the problem. He said that, for him, that was his agenda that encapsulated everything - we thought when we did not need to, and that was the problem.
The Meeting continued reading from Beelzebub's Tales, Chapter 23.
And all this will be quite in the order of things there.
Concerning the ‘scientific experiment’ itself, which they propose to carry out with the apes taken back from Africa, I can with certainty say beforehand, that at any rate the first part of it will without any doubt, succeed ‘wonderfully well.’
And it will succeed wonderfully well, because the apes themselves, as beings of what is called a ‘Terbelnian result,’ are already, owing to their nature, extremely fond of occupying themselves with ‘titillation’ and before the day is out, will no doubt participate in and greatly assist your favorites in this ‘scientific experiment’ of theirs.
As for those beings there who are going to carry out this ‘scientific experiment,’ and as for any benefit from it for the other three-brained beings there, it can all be pictured to oneself if one remembers the profoundly wise saying of our same honorable Mullah Nassr Eddin, in which he says: ‘Happy is that father whose son is even busy with murder and robbery, for he himself will then have no time to get accustomed to occupy himself with “titillation.”’
T said it was shocking that murder and robbery should be put above sexuality. She asked if it was taking to the extreme that it was better to be doing something in the world than not. R said the Mullah was saying that it was best to be active without fantasy. He cited the book Eros and Civilisation, which partly follows on Freud's thoughts on the tension between superego and instinct.
... Well then, my boy, when I left that system, I presented my famous observatory to him with everything in it, and in gratitude for this he promised to report every month, according to the time-calculation of the planet Mars, all the more important events occurring on the planets of that system.
... However, my boy, owing to this etherogram, I have wandered a long way from my original tale.
Let us go back to our former theme.
Well, then, upon this the fourth flight of mine to the planet Earth, our ship Occasion descended onto the sea called the ‘Red Sea.’
RM asked what he meant by etherogram.
T said it was like an email, or a text. "R" said it was like a news bulletin.
| Source NASA |
T liked the way Gurdjieff referred to distraction, when he said the etherogram had caused him to wander from his original tale.
|
| Construction begins on the world's first super telescope. Source phys.org |
... Although the observatory which interested me was not yet quite finished, nevertheless observations of the exterior visibility of cosmic concentrations could be made from it, and the results issuing from them and the reciprocal action of these results could be studied.
Those beings who were occupied with such observations and studies were called, at that period on the Earth, ‘Astrologers.’
But when afterwards that psychic disease of theirs called wiseacring became finally fixed there, owing to which these specialists of theirs also ‘shrivelled and shrank’ and became specialists only in giving names to remote cosmic concentrations, they came to be called ‘Astronomers’.
C said that astrologers were, from what Gurdjieff was saying, more important than astronomers, and that we were going off on the wrong track. IO said that astrologers have wisdom, and astronomers have knowledge. RM said that you could not understand the sea by labeling every wave.
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