obyvatel said:
Immersion said:
Does the soul grow with progress relating to The Work, along with the consciousness?
I think so.
[quote author=Immersion]
Is the soul similar to, or the same as, the essence?
I do not think that the soul is the same as essence. One is born with an essence but not necessarily with an individuated soul which needs to be developed with conscious effort. Gurdjieff did not use the term soul much as far as I am aware. I find Jacob Needleman's description of the soul in "Lost Christianity" useful and think it meshes well with 4th Way principles in general.
[quote author=Lost Christianity]
(1)
The soul is the intermediate principle in human nature, occupying the place between the Spirit and the body. The former term, “Spirit,” Father Sylvan defines variously as “the movement toward Godhead,” “the Uncreated,” “Absolute Origin,” and “Eternal Mind.” The term “body” is also defined in a variety of ways, including but not limited to the physical body. Father Sylvan considers “thoughts” as part of the physical body.
(2)
The power or function of the soul is attention; the development of attention is therefore approximately equivalent to the development and growth of the soul. But the soul also has several components, each with its own power of attention. All components must participate in the perfection of the soul. The principal power of the soul, which defines its real nature, is a gathered attention that is directed simultaneously toward the Spirit and the body. This is “attention of the heart.” And this is the principal mediating, harmonizing power of the soul.
(3) The mediating attention of the heart is spontaneously activated in man in the
state of profound self-questioning, a state that is almost always inaccurately recognized and wrongly valued in everyday experience. “God can only speak to the soul,” Father Sylvan writes, “and only when the soul exists.” He goes on: “But the soul of man only exists for a moment, as long as it takes for the Question to appear and then to disappear, as, for example, in the encounter with death between grief and sadness, between shock and fear; or in the encounter with supersatisfaction, between emptiness and boredom; or in the encounter with life’s revolutionary disappointments, before free fall turns to self-pity.”
(4) The practice of Christianity begins with the repeated efforts to recognize what takes place in oneself in the state of self-questioning. This implies a struggle against attempts to cover over the Question by means of explanations, emotional reactions or physical action. Father Sylvan collectively calls these three impulses “the first dispersal of the soul.” Through this term, he points to the fact that the force of attention is wasted and degraded through absorption by one or another part of the psychophysical organism.
“Certain Oriental teachers,” he writes, “warn us against giving too much attention to the things of the world. Certain of our Christian teachers also say this. But here error creeps in. One may give all one’s outer attention to the world without harming oneself in any way. To tell the truth, we are called by the Creator to spend this kind of attention. The struggle of the Christian is to contain the energy of the Question within oneself, not allowing this deeper attention to be mixed with the attention of the psychophysical organism.” This “first dispersal of the soul” is termed elsewhere by Father Sylvan “attachment,” and in more traditional Christian language, “worldly cares.”
(5) Through containing this special psychic energy that is activated in the experience of deep self-questioning, “the soul comes into existence and begins to gather itself into an independent entity.” According to Father Sylvan, this process can never be carried out without proper guidance and is, in the strictest sense, the task of “authentic esoteric Christianity,” which he characterizes as “the esotericism of energy, rather than words or ideas.”
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(6) Finally, a truly Christian life is possible only for an individual in whom the process of “soul-making” has gone past a certain point. Such individuals are rare, but only they are capable of altruism in the strictly spiritual sense. In Father Sylvan’s language, “the soul begins to radiate.” “The task of self-purification becomes fused with the act of helping my neighbor.” “The first aim of human life is to pass from dispersal to radiation.”
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In short, the soul is not a fixed entity. According to Father Sylvan, it is a movement that begins whenever man experiences the
psychological pain of contradiction. It is an actual energy, but one that is only at some beginning stage of its development and action. Every day, every more or less average human individual experiences the appearance of this energy in its most embryonic stage. Whenever there is pain or contradiction, this energy of the soul is released or “activated.” But almost always, almost without any exceptions whatsoever, this new energy is immediately dispersed and comes to nothing. A hundred, a thousand times a day, perhaps, “the soul is aborted.” An individual is completely unaware of this loss and remains so throughout his whole life. Without the necessary help and guidance, he never reaches the orientation necessary for enabling these everyday experiences to accumulate.
For Father Sylvan, most of our ordinary emotional reactions—both pleasant and unpleasant—only serve to cover over these experiences of contradiction. And the behavior and actions that result from these emotions thicken the covering and lead to further emotional reactions. Man becomes trapped in “the automatism of non-redemptive experience,” a phrase that Father Sylvan juxtaposes with St. Paul’s “body of death.”
“Lost Christianity” is the lost or forgotten power of man to extract the pure energy of the soul from the experiences that make up his life. This possibility is distinct only in the most vivid or painful moments of our ordinary lives, but it can be discovered in all experiences if one knows how to seek it. Certain powerful experiences—such as the encounter with death or deep disappointment—are accompanied by the sensation of presence; an attention appears that is simultaneously open to a higher, freer mind (“Spirit”) and to all the perceptions, sensations and emotions that constitute our ordinary self. One feels both separate and engaged in a new and entirely extraordinary way. One experiences “I Am.” This is the soul (in inception).
[/quote]
Development of the soul leads to connection with the spiritual aspects of the self which may be referred to as the higher centers in 4th Way literature. These higher centers are always there - Adamic humanity (who have the potential of growing an individuated soul) cannot connect with these higher centers because of the absence of the bridge between this spiritual aspect and ordinary consciousness. Soul development through work on the self that balances out personality and essence leads to the development of this bridge. At least that is my present understanding.
fwiw
[/quote]
Thanks Obyvatel for the clarification.
Yes Gurdjieff never uses the word soul in his writings, and my explanation was unclear about the diference between adamics versus pre-adamics.
