Gurdjieff's Primitive Cosmology

[Laura]

If someone is interested to read a book ,,Gurdjieff and Hypnosis''

Biala, you should know that we do not condone giving away the hard work of other authors whose work is still under copyright; it is not only discourteous, it is illegal. I am removing the file. People, please purchase your own copy if possible. If you do not have access to amazon or some other bookseller, a library or other source, please send me a PM and I'll see that you get a copy.

 

[biala84]

Ok, sorry for that. Now i know :)

 

[SocietyoftheSpectacle]

Hi SocietyoftheSpectacle, i bought the kindle version on Amazon(France) it is pretty cheap.
If not take a look to this thread on Divide By Zero answer n°27/29 and also on Konstantin answer n°42

Thanks ,
Off topic I know,
But amazon or somebody taking Down these open sources borders on the criminal IMO.

 

[Approaching Infinity]

But, at the same time, one can realize the main flaw that prevented Gurdjieff from understanding the real nature of some phenomena: his insistence that all was matter. And this wasn't some lack of terminology problem, or anything like what lilies suggested above; it is clear and unequivocal; and for G, "data" was matter.

Yep, this is the big problem I've had with G's cosmology. Even if it might be possible to interpret what he says in a way that is more objective, that's purely an exercise in "creative interpretation". I haven't seen any indication that G was anything other than a hardcore materialist (even if his materialism allowed for all kinds of stuff that other materialists reject outright). Just one more example: his description of the 2nd food, air, and the elements it contains. He's explicitly describing little bits of "something" in the air that get incorporated into the body via breathing. While that may even be true to some extent, it leaves out other possibilities.

And this "air" and its elements become the "matter" for the creation of a second body. And when you die, this "body" detaches from the physical body and then it too decays. If I'm remembering my Beelzebub correctly, only the third body is immortal, and it too is material, albeit "finer" material than the lower 2 bodies. Nowhere in G have I seen anything described in terms of pure information.

This approach may have even been useful at the time: providing a version of materialism that "paces" certain common beliefs about reality, but "leads" with new possibilities previously limited strictly to the realm of religion and mysticism. Of course, that doesn't mean it was perfect. And that means that it is up to us to engage with it critically, suss out its weaknesses, incorporate what works, and transform it into something better.

But, in a sense, what we are doing here is right in line with what Collingwood describes in his "Idea of History" as the development of Mind as a historical process. And, in a sense, it also relates to what G himself said which is similar to what Collingwood was saying: what proceeds from something before, includes and contains that which went before, and contains within itself the seed of its own transformation.

Yep, and the "fourth way" never stays the same. It will always be adapted to the present.

 

[Joe]

As Tamdgidi points out, of all the people with multiple *I*s, Gurdjieff was chief.

Sounds likely. It would be very easy for G to claim that he was "playing a role" when in fact he had just been 'triggered'. The idea of the creation of a sovereign and overseeing 'I' is still plausible though, but just because a person can theorize it and explicate a way to achieving it, doesn't mean that that person themselves has achieved it. At the same time, that person is not any less of a teacher because they have no mastered themselves completely. I think a more reasonable way to look at it is that most people are at different points in their progress, some further along than others, which naturally allows for their 'teacher' status.

 

[mkrnhr]

The enneagram and things like hydrogens and so on could be one aspect Gurdjieff saw necessary in engaging with what he perceived as Western intellectuals. If they're not searching for the miraculous per se (as in Meetings With Remarkable Men), they'd be rather attracted to more mechanistic representations with numbers and diagrams, kind of tapping into the geeky side of an engineer.

If the main essence of Gurdjeff's teaching and life (though his interaction with people, his students, women, etc.) is to be viewed from the psychological point of view, the "mystical" and "mysterious" aspects are very likely superfluous and useless, unless from a historical point of view of how a seemingly unknown individual around the beginning of the 20th century captured the interest of whealthy individuals in his observations of human nature.

 

[lilies]

Began reading Idea of History. What a masterfully crafted, refreshing work! Engages the mind the same way as Ponerology did, which is so rare. I'm grateful. Collingwood writing method is addictive and I just have to see, where he goes. The man is a real technician and original thinker. I love it! Now I got a glimpse of what you meant, Laura.

 

[loreta]

Began reading Idea of History. What a masterfully crafted, refreshing work! Engages the mind the same way as Ponerology did, which is so rare. I'm grateful. Collingwood writing method is addictive and I just have to see, where he goes. The man is a real technician and original thinker. I love it! Now I got a glimpse of what you meant, Laura.

Me too I think it is a very refreshing work, very interesting, I am just at the beginning but I like it. He makes me think about all the books of history I have read or classes of history I have follow at school or University, makes me think about how little I know about how history is, the concept of history, how history is teached to us. Now this is a new look of all of this, and I think he is fascinating, his mind and fascinating how he teach us about the subject of history that is like an ocean, making us go gradually, step by step in a new sort of thinking, opening our mind, he is there guiding us with a machete in front of us, cleaning the path and permitting us to walk in the forest with him. He is a good teacher, I think so and a good writer with so much knowledge.I feel lucky to know him and I am very grateful for it.

 

[Laura]

Just a note: Read through the section on Epistemology and Gurdjieff clearly had the idea that the "awakened conscience" would lead to a feeling of responsibility to the Universe and actions taken to ameliorate the sufferings of humanity. However, we notice that this is particularly what modern Gurdjieff groups do NOT do.

 

[maxtree]

After I read Laura's post that same morning, I was like 'wow!' and needed some time to think. I must confess that I did not understand very well this law of three and seven. I concentrated more on the psychology and that has helped a lot.

The tale of the magician always made me remember Plato's cave. With the C's hyperdimension, well, I assumed G was talking about the same thing.

I started " The Idea" by Collingwood. I have the revised version and began to read his lectures, instead of starting at the beginning, and when I read the words ".. what proceeds from something before, includes and contains that which went before, and contains within itself the seed of its own transformation.", (what Laura also quoted in her post as I saw later) I stopped and wondered where I had heard this idea before and I came to "The fifth option" Bryant M. Shiller I read in 2013 . In it he says, if I remember well, :" Life wants to live" and he was talking about the creation of life.
I guess I will have to reread that book.

I do not want to make noise, just my 2cents

 

[Scottie]

As Tamdgidi points out, of all the people with multiple *I*s, Gurdjieff was chief.

Sounds likely. It would be very easy for G to claim that he was "playing a role" when in fact he had just been 'triggered'. The idea of the creation of a sovereign and overseeing 'I' is still plausible though, but just because a person can theorize it and explicate a way to achieving it, doesn't mean that that person themselves has achieved it. At the same time, that person is not any less of a teacher because they have no mastered themselves completely. I think a more reasonable way to look at it is that most people are at different points in their progress, some further along than others, which naturally allows for their 'teacher' status.

Yup, that's what I'm thinking. And I'm not sure if it could work any other way.

The fuel for change often comes from our own basketcase-ness. Once you recognize an issue, you end up with a rather intimate understanding of the problem on multiple levels: emotional, intellectual, social, etc. It's exactly that deeper understanding that allows one to see it in others, and lend them a hand - at least once you learn to keep projection out of the equation.

Put another way, the more screwed up you are, the more opportunities you have to help others. It's simply a question of choosing to pull yourself up by your bootstraps and "get on with it" vs. choosing to sit and wallow in it. Naturally, this will probably happen in an imperfect way even for somebody like G, because it ain't easy.

G would talk about how people loved their suffering exactly because he loved his suffering, and he knew it. But that's already several orders of magnitude more "wise" than your average person!

So sure, he may have been a dingbat about some things, but that doesn't negate his teachings on other things - and it could actually strengthen them.

 

[mkrnhr]

The fuel for change often comes from our own basketcase-ness. Once you recognize an issue, you end up with a rather intimate understanding of the problem on multiple levels: emotional, intellectual, social, etc. It's exactly that deeper understanding that allows one to see it in others, and lend them a hand - at least once you learn to keep projection out of the equation.

Put another way, the more screwed up you are, the more opportunities you have to help others. It's simply a question of choosing to pull yourself up by your bootstraps and "get on with it" vs. choosing to sit and wallow in it. Naturally, this will probably happen in an imperfect way even for somebody like G, because it ain't easy.

G would talk about how people loved their suffering exactly because he loved his suffering, and he knew it. But that's already several orders of magnitude more "wise" than your average person!

So sure, he may have been a dingbat about some things, but that doesn't negate his teachings on other things - and it could actually strengthen them.

A salient feature of Gurdjieff's teaching IMHO is how he puts others (his pupils) in a position where they contradict themselves. For instance, he keeps hinting to the fact that he's only human. His pupils on the other hand insist that he's a semi-god with no imperfections. Another aspect is how it is clear that the fourth way is about harmonizing the body/intellect/emotions in the real world, and yet the pupils want to stay in the school (or today's Gurdjieffian groups) forever, i.e. in isolation from the world, until he tells them to go away, like in the "he's the messiah" scene in The Life of Brian.

 

[Laura]

I just finished the section on Gurdjieff's myth of the origins of "the organ Kundabuffer" as the explanation of the "fall of humanity" and it is patently bogus and ridiculous! Gurdjieff was making a mighty effort to explain things, but it fell far short of rationality and was full of contradictions mainly because its foundation was materialism.

I'm just reporting what I note here. Peeps really should read the books in the order I read them in order to have the background to see what is really going on in Gurdjieff. It's actually pretty exciting to arrive at some more or less firm understanding of many of these things and all because of a certain sequence of reading. I generally "follow my nose" on what I read and in what order and it very often leads to some useful insights.

I should add that, having read Engberg-Pedersen's "Paul and the Stoics", as well as the tons of Biblical and religious studies, I had a lot of additional background, but I think that can be more or less substituted for by Collingwood's "The Idea of History".

 

[Keit]

Put another way, the more screwed up you are, the more opportunities you have to help others. It's simply a question of choosing to pull yourself up by your bootstraps and "get on with it" vs. choosing to sit and wallow in it. Naturally, this will probably happen in an imperfect way even for somebody like G, because it ain't easy.

It also reminded me what Petterson said about "righteous" people. Paraphrasing, that there is nothing "righteous" about an "innately good" person, but that it has to be a choice by someone who has inner-darkness too. Well, not sure G would fit the description of a "righteous man", but he certainly was capable of inflicting much harm on others and at some point decided/made a promise to the self not to do it.

As for the materialistic cosmology, it makes his "us being food for the Moon" very hard to grasp. Without adding the hyperdimentional aspect to it, that is. If it was purely materialistic and a matter of exchange of vibrations and energy, considering ages of unconscious suffering and bloodshed, and that all this energy supposedly went to the Moon, we should have discovered microbes there already, if not a flourishing ecosystem! ;)

 

[SocietyoftheSpectacle]

As for the materialistic cosmology, it makes his "us being food for the Moon" very hard to grasp. Without adding the hyperdimentional aspect to it, that is. If it was purely materialistic and a matter of exchange of vibrations and energy, considering ages of unconscious suffering and bloodshed, and that all this energy supposedly went to the Moon, we should have discovered microbes there already, if not a flourishing ecosystem! ;)

The soul in embryo lights up the physical body,
the magnetic body is what the greeks refer to as the spirit.
it mediates between the soul in embryo and the physical body.

The physical body feeds the earth ,
the magnetic body , ( like a holographic overcoat made from a web of energy )
feeds the moon.
and the soul in embryo , or Now Matured Soul passes to a higher Dimension or is reborn.

Many mediums that talk to the dead are doing just that,
the magnetic body is not alive,
it just retains the animatioon passed through it,
and as such is able to Raise the frequency of the Moon.

When gurdjieff says we are feeding the moon , he is referring to the whole of a mans life, which if his soul has not grown , then feeding the moon is about all he achieves.

3 Bodies in One,