Tuesday, March 23, 2010

The Five Being Obligolnian Strivings of Ashiata Shiemash

The Five Being Obligolnian Strivings of Ashiata Shiemash (All and Everything by G.I. Gurdjieff, page 385.)

And this took place as follows: "All the beings of that planet then began to work in order to have in their consciousness this divine function of genuine Conscience, and for this purpose, as everywhere in the Universe, they transubstantiated in themselves what are called the 'being-obligolnian strivings' of which there are five, namely:

First Striving: "To have in their ordinary being-existence everything satisfying and really necessary for their planetary body."

Second Striving: "To have a constant and unflagging instinctive need for self-perfection in the sense of being."

Third Striving: "The conscious striving to know ever more and more concerning the laws of World-creation and World-maintenance."

Fourth Striving: "The striving from the beginning of their existence to pay for their arising and their individuality as quickly possible, in order afterwards to be free to lighten as much as possible the Sorrow of our Common Father."

Fifth Striving: "The striving always to assist the most rapid perfecting of other beings, both those similar to oneself and those of other forms, up to the degree of the sacred Martfotai, that is, up to the degree of self-individuality."

Friday, March 19, 2010

Jean Vaysse, Student of the Gurdfieff Teaching

Vayasse, Jean (1917-1975) was born in Le Mans, France (1). In his ordinary life Jean Vaysse participated during the 1950s et '60s in the great discoveries of modern surgery: renal grafts, cardiopulmonary bypasses, and surgery for arterial hypertension. (2) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11255978

"His quest to understand the meaning of life brought him in 1947 to an encounter with the teaching of Gurdjieff. Working in the groups in Paris and later helping to lead them through the 1960s, Jean Vaysse felt the time had come to express Gurdjieff's written teaching in a more coherent and logical way in order to bring it within the range of the average educated reader." (1) "Jean Vaysse was a long time pupil of Jeanne de Salzmann." (3) http://gurdjieff.org.au/resources.html

"Working in the groups in Paris and later helping to lead them through the 1960s, Jean Vaysse felt the time had come to express Gurdjieff's written teaching in a more coherent and logical way in order to bring it within the range of the average educated reader." (1) He wrote "Toward Awakening: An Approach to the Teaching Left by Gurdjieff."

Jean Vaysse helped produce the film documentary:

Georges Gurdjieff

A Documentary Film

Produced by Jean-Claude Lubtchansky

(4) http://www.gurdjieff.org/lubtchansky1.htm

Jean Vaysse is best known for his book,

Toward Awakening: An Approach to the Teaching Left by Gurdjieff (1979) San Francisco: Harper & Row, ISBN 1-85063-115-8

Very little has been written about Jean Vaysse outside of his medical accomplishments and brief mentions of him in conversations of the Fourth Way.

References:

(1) Toward Awakening: An Approach to the Teaching Brought by Gurdjieff by Jean Vaysse (Hardcover - Mar. 17, 2009) ISBN: 978 1 59675 030 2 , page 159

(2) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11255978

(3) http://gurdjieff.org.au/resources.html

(4) http://www.gurdjieff.org/lubtchansky1.htm

Kathryn Hulme (July 6, 1900 - August 25, 1981) was born in San Francisco

Kathryn Hulme (July 6, 1900 - August 25, 1981) was born in San Francisco. She survived the San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906. (1) She died in Kauai. (2) She is best known for her book The Nun's Story that was later made into a movie starring Audrey Hepburn. Kathryn said that "Between the lines of that biography is the story of my own years of inner struggle with the 'Gurdjieffian' work aim." (3) Her book Undiscovered Country includes descriptions of her association with Gurdjieff, his students and his Work.

Kathryn Hulme started studying the ideas of Gurdjieff with Jane Heap in 1931. She first met Gurdjieff in Paris February 1932. She recognized him in the Café de la Paix from the descriptions that she had heard of him from Jane Heap. She introduced herself to him. (4) She spent several months pursuing him to teach her. When Jane Heap left for London on October 18th, Kathryn went straight to the Café de la Paix and entreated Gurdjieff to take her as a student. Gurdjieff nicknamed her Crocodile on the evening of October 18th, 1935. (5) Kathryn and her friends became a unique group of women studying with Gurdjieff. They were called "The Rope." She met routinely with Gurdjieff until May 3rd 1937 when she had her last lunch with him. (6)

During the years before his death she made several visits to Gurdjieff. She visited him in July-August 1938 in when she was in Paris for three weeks. (7) She visited him with other students when he came to NYC in spring 1939 until May19th.(8) In July of 1945 she visited him for a few hours in Paris.(9) In June 1946 she visited him and brought her friend, Marie Louise Habets, who was the subject of the biography, A Nun's Story. (10) She last saw him alive in 1948 at Christmas when Gurdjieff came to New York. (11)

Kathryn Hulme is a key person in the historical account Ladies of the Rope by William Patrick Patterson.


Kathryn Hulme's books:

We lived as children. Reference: http://lccn.loc.gov/38027542

The Nun's Story
Undiscovered Country: A Spiritual Adventure
Annie's Captain
The Wild Place
Au risque de se perdre
Merry Christmas, Mr. Baxter
The Success
The Diamond Hitch
The Sleeping Partner
La Història d'una monja
Arab Interlude
Look a Lion in the Eye: On Safari Through Africa

Desert Night




Footnote:
  1. Undiscovered Country by Kathryn Hulme, Boston, Little, Brown and Company, 1966, page 6.
  2. Ladies of the Rope by William Patrick Patterson, Fairfax California, Arete Communications, page 246.
  3. Undiscovered Country, page 1.
  4. Undiscovered Country, page 60.
  5. Undiscovered Country, page 74.
  6. Ladies of the Rope page 129.
  7. Undiscovered Country page 162.
  8. Undiscovered Country page 173.
  9. Undiscovered Country page 211.
  10. Undiscovered Country page 254.
  11. Ladies of the Rope, page 185.

Saturday, February 27, 2010

The new Gurdjieff Journal is out!



Read below.

The Gurdjieff Journal

Current Issue - #51 Volume 13 Issue 3


Certainty in a Time of Uncertainty

The financial meltdown, doomsday scenarios, the Mayan Calendar's 2012—how to come to certainty with so much uncertainty?

Gurdjieff & Food
Part I

The prolongation of human life is key in developing higher levels of being and bodies. What part does physical food play? What did Gurdjieff serve at his table?

In Search of The Soul
Part IX
Buddhism
Part I

The continuing exploration of how different religions and paths view the soul.


Monday, November 23, 2009

Mind/Body

Gurdjieff taught, and left it for us to verify by our own experience, that we have 3 brains!

Head brain,
Feeling (emotional) brain
Moving/instinctive brain.

Lifting weights connects the thinking center (brain) to the moving center (brain) thus allowing a fuller perception and intelligence.
The connection is more powerful if the movements are done with conscious sensation of the body, consciously.

ref: In Search of the Miraculous, chapter 6, page 107 "The most complete knowledge of a given subject possible for us can only be obtained if we examine it simultaneously with our mind, feelings, and sensations."

Monday, November 16, 2009

Quotes from In Search Of The Miraculous: Fragments Of An Unknown Teaching -2

Quotes from In Search Of The Miraculous: Fragments Of An Unknown Teaching.
(Page/Paragraph/Sentence)

Centers

348/0/3
"It means that a definite work of the thinking center is connected with a definite work of the emotional and moving centers…Everything is connected and one thing cannot exist without the other."

348/3/3
Often therefore, the sole possibility of making the other enters work in a new way is to begin with the moving center; that is with the body."

362/4/2
"You must understand that a man's will can b e sufficient to govern one center for a short time. But the other two centers prevent this. And a man's will can never be sufficient to govern three centers."

Octaves

130/3/2
"We neither understand nor see what is going on around and within us, either because we do not allow for the inevitability of descent when there is no ascent, or because we take descent to be ascent. These are two fundamental causes of our self-deception."

134/1/
"The possibility of artificial, that is, specially created, 'additional shocks' gives a practical meaning to the study of the law of octaves and makes this study obligatory and necessary if a man desires to step out of the role of passive spectator of that which is happening to him and around him."

134/2/
"The 'man-machine' can do nothing. To him and around him everything happens. In order to do it is necessary to know the law of octaves, to know the moments of the 'intervals' and be able to create necessary 'additional shocks.'

135/3/
"You must understand and feel this law in your selves. Only then will you see it outside yourselves."

Shocks

193/1/4
"The second volitional 'shock' and transmutation become physically possible only after long practice on the first volitional 'shock,' which consists in self-remembering, and in observing the impressions received. … Right development on the Fourth Way must begin with the first volitional 'shock' and then pass to the second 'shock' at mi 12."

Centers/Energy

193/4/1
"The centers of the human machined work with different 'hydrogens.' This constitutes their chief difference."

195/5/1
"The thinking or intellectual center is the slowest of all the three centers we have examined up to now."

194/1/3
"The intellectual center is never able to follow the work of the moving center. We are unable to follow either our own movements or other people's movements unless they are artificially slowed down. Still less are se able to follow the work of the inner, the instinctive functions of our organism, the work of the instinctive mind which constitutes, as it were, one side of the moving center."

194/6/0
"It is the lower centers that are undeveloped." And its is precisely this lack of development, or the incomplete functioning, of the lower centers that prevents us from making use of the higher centers."

194/12/3
"But in ordinary conditions the difference between the speed of our usual emotions and the speed of the higher emotional center is so great that no connection can take place and we fail to hear within us the voices which are speaking and calling to us from the higher emotional center."

196/0
"Thus in order to regulate and accelerate the work of the lower centers, the primary object must consist in freeing each center from work foreign and unnatural to it, and in bringing it back to its own work which it can do better that any other center."

196/3/0
"In order to regulate and balance the work of the three centers whose functions constitute our life, it is necessary to learn to economize the energy produced by our organism, not to waste energy on unnecessary functions, and save it for that activity which will gradually connect the lower centers with the higher."

Energy

179/3/1
"---every normal man has quite enough energy to begin work on himself. It is only necessary to learn how to save the greater part of the energy we possess for useful work instead of wasting it unproductively."

179/4/
"Energy is spent chiefly on unnecessary and unpleasant emotions, on the expectation of unpleasant things, possible and impossible, on bad moods, on unnecessary haste, nervousness, irritability, imagination, daydreaming, and so. Energy is wasted on the wrong work of centers; on unnecessary tension of the muscles out of all proportion to the work produced; on perpetual chatter which absorbs an enormous amount of energy; on the 'interest' continually taken in things happening around us or to other people and having in fact no interest whatever; on the constant waste of the force of 'attention;' and so on, and so on.

179/5/0
"In beginning to struggle with all these habitual sides of his life a man saves an enormous amount of energy, and with the help of this energy he can easily begin the work of self-study and self-perfection."

Quotes from In Search Of The Miraculous: Fragments Of An Unknown Teaching.

Quotes from In Search Of The Miraculous: Fragments Of An Unknown Teaching.
(Page/Paragraph/Sentence)

Imagination:
220/2/1
"In reality Kundalini is the power of imagination, the power of fantasy, which takes the place of a real function. When a man dreams instead of acting, when his dreams take the place of reality, when a man imagines himself to be an eagle, a lion, or magician, it is the force of Kundalini acting in him.

Energy

179/3/1
"---every normal man has quite enough energy to begin work on himself. It is only necessary to learn how to save the greater part of the energy we possess for useful work instead of wasting it unproductively."

179/4/
"Energy is spent chiefly on unnecessary and unpleasant emotions, on the expectation of unpleasant things, possible and impossible, on bad moods, on unnecessary haste, nervousness, irritability, imagination, daydreaming, and so. Energy is wasted on the wrong work of centers; on unnecessary tension of the muscles out of all proportion to the work produced; on perpetual chatter which absorbs an enormous amount of energy; on the 'interest' continually taken in things happening around us or to other people and having in fact no interest whatever; on the constant waste of the force of 'attention;' and so on, and so on.

179/5/0
"In beginning to struggle with all these habitual sides of his life a man saves an enormous amount of energy, and with the help of this energy he can easily begin the work of self-study and self-perfection."

130/3/2
"We neither understand nor see what is going on around and within us, either because we do not allow for the inevitability of descent when there is no ascent, or because we take descent to be ascent. These are two fundamental causes of our self-deception."


195/5/1
"The thinking or intellectual center is the slowest of all the three centers we have examined up to now."

194/1/3
"The intellectual center is never able to follow the work of the moving center. We are unable to follow either our own movements or other people's movements unless they are artificially slowed down. Still less are se able to follow the work of the inner, the instinctive functions of our organism, the work of the instinctive mind which constitutes, as it were, one side of the moving center."

194/6/0
"It is the lower centers that are undeveloped." And its is precisely this lack of development, or the incomplete functioning, of the lower centers that prevents us from making use of the higher centers."

194/12/3
"But in ordinary conditions the difference between the speed of our usual emotions and the speed of the higher emotional center is so great that no connection can take place and we fail to hear within us the voices which are speaking and calling to us from the higher emotional center."

196/0
"Thus in order to regulate and accelerate the work of the lower centers, the primary object must consist in freeing each center from work foreign and unnatural to it, and in bringing it back to its own work which it can do better that any other center."

196/3/0
"In order to regulate and balance the work of the three centers whose functions constitute our life, it is necessary to learn to economize the energy produced by our organism, not to waste energy on unnecessary functions, and save it for that activity which will gradually connect the lower centers with the higher."

188/3/0
"It has been explained before that in ordinary conditions of life we do not remember ourselves, we do not remember, that is, we do not feel ourselves, are not aware of ourselves at the moment of a perception, of an emotion, of a thought or of an action."

Effort

232/8/2
"Only super-efforts count."

232/10/0
"…it is better to die making efforts to waken than to live in sleep."

282/1/1
"When self-deceit is destroyed and a man begins to see the difference between the mechanical and the conscious in himself, there begins a struggle for the realization of consciousness in life for the subordination of the mechanical to the conscious. For this purpose a man begins with endeavors to set a definite decision, coming from conscious motives, against mechanical processes proceeding according to the laws of duality. The creation of a permanent third principle is for man the transformation of the duality into the trinity."


Symbols

282/5/2
"… a symbol can never be fully interpreted. It can only be experienced, in the same way for instance, as the idea of self-knowledge must be experienced."

Self Observation

107/3/3
"The most complete knowledge of a given subject possible for s can only be obtained if we examine it simultaneously with our mind, feelings, and sensations."

117/1/5
"Both consciousness and the different degrees of consciousness must be understood in oneself by sensation, by taste. No definitions can help you in this case and no definitions are possible so long as you do not understand what you have to define."

117/6/2
"… you do not remember yourselves. You do not feel yourselves; you are not conscious of yourselves. With you, 'it observes' just as 'it speaks,' 'it thinks,' 'it laughs.' You do not feel: I observe, I notice, I see. Everything still 'is noticed,' 'is seen.' … In order to really observe oneself one must first of all remember oneself."

118/0/3
"only those results will have any value that are accompanied by self-remembering. Otherwise you yourselves do not exist in the your observations."