cubbex said:
Hithere said:
Children under 8-9 years of age sometimes seem to be able to be completely free in their interactions with each other, and often show great spontaneous empathy and a sense of community, without the herd mentality that comes with the years in many. This behaviour is not always manifesting itself of course, but watching children is often an inspiration for me; it makes me want to try to avoid my own filters in my perception of people and situations in the same way.
Do you mean to have a children judgement?
Hithere said:
No - to have one's intellectual/emotional/motor faculties intact, but strive to lessen the predator's influence. Children seem to be able to take in their surroundings without flavoring it with their own personality to a greater degree than adults, as far as I can tell.
Hi Hithere and Cubbex, interesting exchange. The post, question and clarification draw out a couple aspects of what it means to be a child -- to "be completely free in their interactions with each other;" to "show great spontaneous empathy and a sense of community;" to lack judgment; and to"take in their surroundings without flavoring it with their own personality."
This may be a slight departure, but given the relatively popular spiritual meme (especially in new age circles) that advocates the "authenticity" and "spontaneity" common to children, I thought you and others on this board might be interested to review some of Gurdjieff's reported views on the subject.
To begin, I imagine many on this forum are familiar with the following quote that Kenneth Walker attributes to Gurdjieff in
A Study of Gurdjieff's Teaching:
We must destroy our buffers. Children have none; therefore, we must become like little children.
In keeping with the aims of this forum, to destroy our buffers and reach objective consciousness, I suppose in this sense "we must become like little children" indeed. However, a few more quotes may better clarify how we should be like children, and how we shouldn't.
In Views from the Real World [hat tip to Bar Kochba whose quote above on conserving energy sent me back to the book] we read:
[quote author=Gurdjieff in Views from the Real World, "When speaking on different subjects..."]
Every man comes into the world like a clean sheet of paper; and then the people and circumstances around him begin vying with each other to dirty this sheet and to cover it with writing. Education, the formation of morals, information we call knowledge -- all feelings of duty, honor, conscience and so on -- enter here. And they all claim that the methods adopted for grafting these shoots known as man's "personality" to the trunk are immutable and infallible. Gradually the sheet is dirtied, and the dirtier with so-called "knowledge" the sheet becomes, the cleverer the man is considered to be. The more writing there is in the place called "duty," the more honest the possessor is said to be; and so it is with everything. And the dirty sheet itself, seeing that people consider its "dirt" as merit, considers it valuable. This is an example of what we call "man," to which we often even add such words as talent and genius. Yet our "genius" will have his mood spoiled for the whole day if he does not find his slippers beside his bed when he wakes up in the morning." [/quote]
The "clean" and "dirty" comparison might lead one to believe that it is better to be a blank piece of paper, like a child. Not so, according to the following:
[quote author=Gurdjieff in Views from the Real World, "Separation of oneself from oneself"]
The only difference between a child and a grown-up man is in the mind. All the weaknesses are there, beginning with hunger, with sensitivity, with naivete; there is no difference. The same things are in a child and in a grown-up man: love, hate, everything. Functions are the same, receptivity is the same, equally they react, equally they are given to imaginary fears. In short there is no difference. The only difference is in the mind: we have more material, more logic than a child.
Now again as an example: A. looked at me and called me a fool. I lost my temper and went for him. A child does the same. But a grown-up man, who will be just as angry, will not hit him; he will restrain himself. For if he does hit him, the police will come and he is afraid of what other people will think; they will say: "What an uncontrolled man!" Or I refrain for fear he will run away from me tomorrow, and I need him for my work. In short, there are thousands of thoughts that may stop me or fail to stop me. But still these thoughts will be there.
A child has no logic, no material, and because of that his mind is only function. His mind will not stop to think -- with him it will be "it thinks," but this "it thinks" will be colored with hate, which means identification.
There are no definite degrees between children and adults. Length of life does not mean maturity. A man may live to a hundred and yet remain a child; he may grow tall and be child all the same, if we mean by a "child" one who has no independent logic in his mind. A man can be called "grown-up" only from the moment his mind has acquired this quality. So from this point of view, it can be said that the Institute is only for grown-up people. Only a grown-up person can derive any profit from it. A boy or a girl of eight can be grown-up, and man of sixty can be a child. The Institute cannot make people grown-up; they have to be grown-up before they come to the Institute. Those who are in the Institute must be grown-up, and by this I mean grown-up not in their essence but in their mind."[/quote]
We also find a relevant passage in "Formatory Apparatus":
[quote author=Gurdjieff in Views from the Real World, "Formatory Apparatus"]
Adults are like children and children are like adults: all of them react. The machine works and will go on working in the same way a thousand years hence.
[/quote]
So, it seems to me that we should
not consider the "authenticity" and "spontaneity" of children as a goal of esoteric development. They simply don't have minds/personalities developed enough interfere with mechanical manifestations of essence. Fourth way esoteric development demands friction between essence and personality. Quoting Ouspensky now:
[quote author=Ouspensky ISOTM, Chapter 8]
"For inner growth, for work on oneself, a certain development of personality as well as a certain strength of essence are necessary. Personality consists of 'rolls,' and of 'buffers' resulting from a certain work of the centers. An insufficiently developed personality means a lack of 'rolls,' that is, a lack of knowledge, a lack of information, a lack of the material upon which work on oneself must be based. Without some store of knowledge, without a certain amount of material 'not his own,' a man cannot begin to work on himself, he cannot begin to study himself, he cannot begin to struggle with his mechanical habits, simply because there will be no reason or motive for undertaking such work.
"It does not mean that all the ways are closed to him. The way of the fakir and the way of the monk, which do not require any intellectual development, remain open to him. But the methods and the means which are possible for a man of a developed intellect are impossible for him. Thus evolution is equally difficult for a cultured or an uncultured man. A cultured man lives far from nature, far from natural conditions of existence, in artificial conditions of life, developing his personality at the expense of his essence. A less cultured man, living in more normal and more natural conditions, develops his essence at the expense of his personality. A successful beginning of work on oneself requires the happy occurrence of an equal development of personality and essence. Such an occurrence will give the greatest assurance of success."[/quote]
Note that someone with an insufficiently developed personality (i.e. a mostly empty sheet of paper) has recourse to the ways of the Monk or Fakir, and that development along those lines will require an equal amount of work.
So finally, even without buffers, whether growing up in a brownstone in New York or a debris hut in the Pamir Mountains, children have very much work ahead of them if they wish to "do." In general, much more than someone who is "grown-up."
Thoughts?
