Observation must begin from the beginning

[Nick_A]

I believe that this thought is the truth, ...

If "source" is "Good", then why emphasis on a polysemous term like "truth?"

Can it be resolved through more facts or does it require a conscious rather than a conditioned perspective?

Maybe it requires understanding the same trick involved in creating paradox and suffering an incapacity to resolve them? Simply, paradox, like certain undecidable questions, quantum uncertainty and questions with the Buddhist's "Mu" answer, exist due to people's tendency to assume that propositions and questions must be set up, understood and resolved logically or mathematically within a single axiomatic framework, or context (re: Magritte's The Treachery of Images vis-a-vis his La condition humaine) which they define and monitor for violations.

Science and religion do not peacefully co-exist because each wants theirs to be "the" only axiom set for all and everything.

My 2 cents.

The relationship between the good and the truth is a whole other topic. Science and religion do not peacefully co-exist in the darkness of Plato's cave governed by imagination. But since science and the essence of religion are both true, they must be related as two facets of the same whole. Their artificial division is further proof of Man's existence in Plato's cave.

One of my ancestors had an ability to depict the interaction of elemental forces. Once I discovered the forces as described in the Law of Three, I saw this relationship in his works of art. I'm not selling art but just intend on using it as a means to vivify the concept of force. Simone Weil also described it in her essay on the Iliad where she declared the hero as "force."

It amazes me how all this fits together when I retain the humility necessary to remain open to the possibility that I am in Plato's cave.

 

[Vic]

Hi Pj

I was attracted to the forum since it dealt with topics such as esoteric Christianity and the Work. I was curious how they were understood here. The special language Gurdjieff refers to includes scale and relativity. For example what is a man? Gurdjieff defined gradations of man. What is man #4 ? Is it just a man? Have you discussed what man#4 is on this forum? Would it be worthwhile?

My consolation has been a verification that I am a machine in a madhouse but the situation isn’t hopeless. You can call this consolation but I cannot see it as harmful.

By “strange place” I mean simultaneously not wanting to share but feeling compelled to do so because of what I’ve been given. I have no interest in evangelizing but just revealing a “choice” normally overlooked in the chaos of modern life. Must a person be just a necessity, a thing reacting in obedience to universal laws, or can a person also serve a conscious purpose?

Hi Nick_A

I think every aspect of G's teachings have been, and are, discussed here. Maybe a search will take you to a specific thread on the gradations of man, or indeed man #4 itself. If not why not open up a new topic?

No, I don't, though some may, call "...a verification that I am a machine in a madhouse but the situation isn’t hopeless." consolation.I call it necessary knowledge in order to proceed with the Work.

"By “strange place” I mean simultaneously not wanting to share but feeling compelled to do so because of what I’ve been given."

Have you asked yourself why you don't want to share? I would be interested to know the reason.

"...can a person also serve a conscious purpose?"

Yes. But in order to serve it we must first know ourselves. I might even go as far as to say knowing ourselves is the purpose. Or the purpose is what we make it.

But how do you define 'purpose' in the context of our discussion?

1. The object toward which one strives or for which something exists; an aim or a goal:
2. A result or effect that is intended or desired; an intention.
3. Determination; resolution: He was a man of purpose.
4. The matter at hand; the point at issue.tr.v. pur·posed, pur·pos·ing, pur·pos·es To intend or resolve to perform or accomplish.

 

[Buddy]

Well, now you're starting to sound less fixated and more human. :)

The relationship between the good and the truth is a whole other topic.

You're right and btw I know that topic well, too...which is why I asked the question.

It amazes me how all this fits together when I retain the humility necessary to remain open to the possibility that I am in Plato's cave.

Well, that's one way to describe where we stand in relation to The Most Most Holy Absolute. :)

 

[Nick_A]

Hi Pj


Have you asked yourself why you don't want to share? I would be interested to know the reason.

It is old conditioning. I've always been the odd one so sharing honestly has never been beneficial. It has become more beneficial to lie since my more honest observations are rejected. Then one day I discovered the Work and experienced that there were those who understood my observations far better than I did. I may have felt myself surrounded by idiots but now I was the idiot surrounded by people like Gurdjieff, Ouspensky, and Orage for example whose understanding was far superior to mine. I realized that without appreciating the scale of being, my understanding was meaningless. This didn't annoy me. I was grateful for the experience.


This is where Simone comes in. She is not connected to any school but just came like a comet, stirred things up, and left. Sharing her questions and the negativity they may produce doesn't effect any others. She is ego deflating. People are free to hate me or Simone but it is limited to that. I would not want it to extend to Gurdjieff for example. Yet for anyone sensitive to what Simone brought and the questions they produce, the Work is there for those who need answers.


But how do you define 'purpose' in the context of our discussion?

1. The object toward which one strives or for which something exists; an aim or a goal:
2. A result or effect that is intended or desired; an intention.
3. Determination; resolution: He was a man of purpose.
4. The matter at hand; the point at issue.tr.v. pur·posed, pur·pos·ing, pur·pos·es To intend or resolve to perform or accomplish.


You seem to be referring to a conditioned purpose or an intent in life. I am referring to the objective purpose of organic life on earth. It is a mechanical necessity. Apparently we also have the potential for a conscious purpose connecting above and below or levels of reality. We may not understand the attraction anymore than an acorn understands what it means to be an oak. Yet the potential is there and some become open to it.

 

[Nick_A]

Well, now you're starting to sound less fixated and more human. :)

The relationship between the good and the truth is a whole other topic.

You're right and btw I know that topic well, too...which is why I asked the question.

It amazes me how all this fits together when I retain the humility necessary to remain open to the possibility that I am in Plato's cave.

Well, that's one way to describe where we stand in relation to The Most Most Holy Absolute. :)

Have you read "The New Man" by Maurice Nicoll? The section on "Good being above truth" is very thought provoking.

 

[Buddy]

Have you read "The New Man" by Maurice Nicoll? The section on "Good being above truth" is very thought provoking.

No, I'm not loving Maurice Nicoll at present, though I have the complete works of his commentaries and once got in trouble for quoting him without seeing how he can subtly twist a line of force in G's thought. So, I revisited the commentaries with a more critical bent and began to discern what I previously described as his religious aims. Now I prefer to go right to the source where possible. And speaking of which I have what I believe to be a very extensive library of contrasting and complementary works on philosophic and metaphysical thought through the ages and have been researching that and many, many other subjects besides and on top, simultaneously and conjunctively.

Stuff with 'quantum' in the name represents my most recent attraction - especially the works of any and every quantum thinker and biologist, whether in a philosophical, metaphysical, biological or computing context.

As regards "The Truth and The Good", the tile game of "Truth" and "Good" swapping places in a hierarchial metaphysical framework began at a certain time in man's history and once you understand the 'rules' of that game, you can spot a player just about anywhere. That's probably why I weary of the theosophists, anthroposophists, existentialists or any proponent of any of the 234 other Isms (_http://phrontistery.info/isms.html) and any that see dollar signs in any act of seemingly demoting Gurdjieff to the level of mere dispensible instrument to their aims. Here, Gurdjieff is more a cornerstone and you probably know a good purpose for a cornerstone in a structure?

Additionally, an understanding of studies involving our adaptive unconscious reveals that people high in a need for intellectual cognition or working memory have the greatest disparity between their external-explicit and internal-implicit dispositions. I have found this to be more or less true with myself and have dedicated my current aim to closing this gap; thus the reference to growth of being.

Please consider yourself re-invited to getting up to speed with foundational reading material. Learning is fun! :) Just a thought.

 

[Nick_A]

Buddy, if you're into quantum stuff, I consider Basarab Nicolescu to be an extraordinary thinker in the Work. Granted he loses me but that's OK. I'm not a trained science. Yet I understand this Law of the Included Middle in relation to the law of Three and believe it will become a necessary part of eventually uniting science with the vertical essence of religion. In case you haven't read it, enjoy

http://ciret-transdisciplinarity.org/bulletin/b12c3.php

 

[Buddy]

[quote author=_http://ciret-transdisciplinarity.org/bulletin/b12c3.php]
Our understanding of the axiom of the included middle -- there exists a third term T which is at the same time A and non-A -- is completely clarified once the notion of "levels of Reality" is introduced.[/quote]

Well it sounds kind of formal but sure, "levels of Reality" can be mapped to "levels of context" that comprise what I understand as polycontextural logic and is consistent with my understanding of the significance of Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems (and whose work comprises the core concepts of "PaleoChristianity"). It's like an understanding that a 'fact' is an intersection of many contexts and may mean something entirely different in each or have no meaning at all in some other context. Sort of like the Krebs or citric cycle in the liver. The living components involved in that thought construct exist, but the Krebs cycle per se, does not. Mainly because lots of other contexts, like a screaming match between mom and dad will effect hormones, enzymes and other processes involved in that narrowly bounded "cycle" within a child's (for example) liver and may be a more direct reason for a malfunctioning organ than some pathophysiology requiring drugs. That was just an example off the top of my head. Doctors please note and don't jump me!

Thanks for the link.

Are we back on topic yet? :)

 

[Nick_A]

OK, to get back on topic. Read this excerpt from Simone Weil's Lectures on Philosophy. Do you agree that it reflects Gurdjieff's warning that self observation without impartiality loses its value and just expresses an identification in a different way. It is natural to think of change but this reaction denies the value of self observation which is seeing what IS.

"Introspection is a psychological state incompatible with other states.
"1. Thinking about things of the world precludes introspection.
"2. Very strong emotion precludes introspection.
"3. All actions which require attention preclude introspection.

"To sum up, thought, action and emotion exclude examination of oneself.

"[therefore] introspection results in one's taking notice, for the most part, of what is passive in human thought. By the very fact that one keeps a watch on oneself, one changes: and the change is for the worse since we prevent that which is of greatest value in us from playing its part." – Lectures on Philosophy

 

[Buddy]

Do you agree that it reflects Gurdjieff's warning that self observation without impartiality loses its value and just expresses an identification in a different way.

Is that what Gurdjieff said? Or is it a paraphrasing of what Gurdjieff said and maybe inappropriate in a Q & A format that seeks an answer with any degree of precision or accuracy? GIGO, as they say. To address your paraphrasing though and its apparent implication, if one were to realize that an effort to self-observe resulted in an identification, that, in itself, would be a huge gain in value. So if that "just" implies a form of worthlessness for the general context, then I would disagree. Could you ride a bicycle without falling off or losing your balance a time or two at the beginning of your efforts?

"Introspection is a psychological state incompatible with other states.
"1. Thinking about things of the world precludes introspection.
"2. Very strong emotion precludes introspection.
"3. All actions which require attention preclude introspection.

"To sum up, thought, action and emotion exclude examination of oneself.

Weil seems to have something else in mind than simple recording and mental "caching" of results from an effort of impartial observation. If "examination of oneself" is Weil's general meaning for introspection, then such an activity would seem to preclude an absolute impartiality as one would have personal interest in results and a necessity to use his or her intuition to guide an introspective process. And why not? When have you ever achieved more than what can be more precisely defined as conceptual approximation? Perhaps one could achieve a useful un-biasing toward a particular subject though.

The above is probably what Camus perceived as a justification for the "Being-for-Itself" construct that appears to want decoupling of consciousness from phenomena of which it is conscious. What is "oneself" apart from "thought, action and emotion", in addition to all else one may be? And why the apparent presumption of need for separation? Just practice a form of "looking outward" for a change of perspective as an experiment as one option.

Gurdjieff's self-observation and Weil's introspection seem to be different contexts for an act of self-perceiving - both useful for different reasons perhaps, but not isomorphic (to abuse a mathematical term).

Enter the adaptive unconscious...

During social interaction, people typically pay relatively little attention to the uncontrolled (e.g., nonverbal) aspects of their behavior, quite in contrast to what they say or what they intentionally do. Hence, asking individuals to adopt the visual perspective of an observer and to focus on these normally unattended behavioral cues may increase self-perceivers’ accuracy about their underlying implicit dispositions.

Consciousness, Introspection, and the Adaptive Unconscious, Wilhelm Hofmann and Timothy D. Wilson
_http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/wilhelm.hofmann/publications/Hofmann_Wilson_consciousness_introspection_adaptive_unconscious_2010.pdf

...and the topic and this thread is Paddyjohn's. This may be an off-putting distraction. Off to bed now, I am.

 

[Nick_A]

Buddy, when the goal of self observation is change without first having received the objective results of impartial self observation, it may be objectively worthless. From chapter VI of ISM and the section on self observation. It is what Simone is referring to. Water seeks its own level. The body is like that.

"Change under ordinary conditions is impossible, because, in wanting to change something a man wants to change this one thing only. But everything in the machine is interconnected and every function is inevitably counterbalanced by some other function or by a whole series of other functions, although we are not aware of this interconnection of the various functions within ourselves. The machine is balanced in all its details at every moment of its activity. If a man observes in himself something that he dislikes and begins making efforts to alter it, he may succeed in obtaining a certain result. But together with this result he will inevitably obtain another result, which he did not in the least expect or desire and which he could not have suspected. By striving to destroy and annihilate everything that he dislikes, by making efforts to this end, he upsets the balance of the machine. The machine strives to re-establish the balance and re-establishes it by creating a new function which the man could not have foreseen. For instance, a man may observe that he is very absent-minded, that he forgets everything, loses everything, and so on. He begins to struggle with this habit and, if he is sufficiently methodical and determined, he succeeds, after a time, in attaining the desired result: he ceases to forget and to lose things. This he notices, but there is something else he does not notice, which other people notice, namely, that he has grown irritable, pedantic, fault-finding, disagreeable. Irritability has appeared as the result of his having lost his absent-mindedness.

 

[Buddy]

Buddy, when the goal of self observation is change without first having received the objective results of impartial self observation, it may be objectively worthless. From chapter VI of ISM and the section on self observation. It is what Simone is referring to. Water seeks its own level. The body is like that.

"Change under ordinary conditions is impossible, because, in wanting to change something a man wants to change this one thing only. But everything in the machine is interconnected and every function is inevitably counterbalanced by some other function or by a whole series of other functions, although we are not aware of this interconnection of the various functions within ourselves. The machine is balanced in all its details at every moment of its activity. If a man observes in himself something that he dislikes and begins making efforts to alter it, he may succeed in obtaining a certain result. But together with this result he will inevitably obtain another result, which he did not in the least expect or desire and which he could not have suspected. By striving to destroy and annihilate everything that he dislikes, by making efforts to this end, he upsets the balance of the machine. The machine strives to re-establish the balance and re-establishes it by creating a new function which the man could not have foreseen. For instance, a man may observe that he is very absent-minded, that he forgets everything, loses everything, and so on. He begins to struggle with this habit and, if he is sufficiently methodical and determined, he succeeds, after a time, in attaining the desired result: he ceases to forget and to lose things. This he notices, but there is something else he does not notice, which other people notice, namely, that he has grown irritable, pedantic, fault-finding, disagreeable. Irritability has appeared as the result of his having lost his absent-mindedness.

OK, I'll go to bed in a minute. When the goal of self observation is change? When did they change the goal for that? In the above quote, G is not speaking of self-observation for the purpose of instructing in the practice (even though it may appear so on the surface), and regardless of when and what someone seeks to change. That's one context. He is speaking of a goal of change qua change and his explanation covers how even the mere possession of objective results from self-observation can be irrelevant. That's another context. In that description, the why is also a description of a certain result of a certain dynamic: homeostasis, or reciprocal maintenance. Homeostasis allows change only in a context of neutralizing entropy and restoring balance, i.e., a kind of mutually reinforcing "feeding" where balance is the goal. Permanent change and "Doing" that enters or adds to the descending stream of the creative force requires another level of understanding: what might be called "poise" or "timing" and relates to "originary" time in Gurdjieff's cosmology. Put all the food you want to in a cow's belly, but until the environment is properly prepared and the food is preceded by digestive enzymes, it won't make any difference. "Timing", see?

Are you sure you know Gurdjieff? :D Just kidding. 'Night, for real this time.

 

[Amy]

[...] Homeostasis allows change only in a context of neutralizing entropy and restoring balance, i.e., a kind of mutually reinforcing "feeding" where balance is the goal. Permanent change and "Doing" that enters or adds to the descending stream of the creative force requires another level of understanding: what might be called "poise" or "timing" and relates to "originary" time in Gurdjieff's cosmology. Put all the food you want to in a cow's belly, but until the environment is properly prepared and the food is preceded by digestive enzymes, it won't make any difference. "Timing", see?

Are you sure you know Gurdjieff? :D Just kidding. 'Night, for real this time.

You speak of being balanced and in lined with the forces - which relates to fruitful Timing ...
and your reply was posted on 05:05:05 AM , how did you do that ? Interesting!!!

 

[Vic]

Okay, I declare this thread officially hijacked, and that's very good for my self-importance :) To be honest I'm pleased that this has evolved into a more general study of the title statement. It's easy enough for me to start a thread somewhere else if I feel the need. In fact I will because I am about to do something that will alter my direction. As Laura said ...if you want your reality to change, then change your reality (if that's not word-for-word consider it my paraphrase)

Buddy, I am stunned by your breadth of knowledge and your mental stamina. I was also well pleased to read "...people high in a need for intellectual cognition or working memory have the greatest disparity between their external-explicit and internal-implicit dispositions. I have found this to be more or less true with myself and have dedicated my current aim to closing this gap; thus the reference to growth of being. Nick_A? ;)

Nick_A, I'm glad you are still here and haven't been put off by our questions. They are all well-meant. Now stop being so stubborn, tear yourself away from Simone for a while, and read The Wave series.

Hello, Amy, and welcome.

 

[Nick_A]

Okay, I declare this thread officially hijacked, and that's very good for my self-importance :) To be honest I'm pleased that this has evolved into a more general study of the title statement. It's easy enough for me to start a thread somewhere else if I feel the need. In fact I will because I am about to do something that will alter my direction. As Laura said ...if you want your reality to change, then change your reality (if that's not word-for-word consider it my paraphrase)

Buddy, I am stunned by your breadth of knowledge and your mental stamina. I was also well pleased to read "...people high in a need for intellectual cognition or working memory have the greatest disparity between their external-explicit and internal-implicit dispositions. I have found this to be more or less true with myself and have dedicated my current aim to closing this gap; thus the reference to growth of being. Nick_A? ;)

Nick_A, I'm glad you are still here and haven't been put off by our questions. They are all well-meant. Now stop being so stubborn, tear yourself away from Simone for a while, and read The Wave series.

Hello, Amy, and welcome.

There is no reason to be put off by questions. I've always been the one who could poke holes in modern theories. I was amazed and gratified to discover that the Work could include my questions. Everything fit. I never thought it could be possible. I always welcome questions.

I've been reading a little and am relieved that channeling is not accepted hook, line, and sinker by Laura. After reading what happened to Helen Shucman and her channeling leading to "A Course in Miracles" I am very wary of channeling. However, a conscious connection with "help from above" is also a conscious human potential as with St. Paul experiencing Jesus. The idea of the wave fits in with my own personal research as does our materiality serving as food so I'll read the wave series.