Conclusion

Gurdjieff taught that there are several roads to human evolution, to evolve from the carriage to the aeroplane. To increase awareness.

Each one of us will have a preferred route to reach this aim. All I am trying to do with these blogs is to make one aware that it is possible. Many other blogs on this site would agree with me. The key is to find your route, your path and begin to walk it. You don’t have to abstain from life or pleasure to reach your aim, all you have to do is to be more aware. Realise your potential, that of an aeroplane rather than a horse-carriage.

I don’t for a second think I hold all the answers, and so I will not pretend I do.

To finish I will share a quote I came across the other day that illustrates the point I am trying to make beautifully.

“Man is in the making but henceforth he must make himself. To that point Nature has led him out of the primeval slime. She has given him limbs, she has given him a brain, she has given him the rudiments of a soul. Now it is for him to make or mar that splendid torso. Let him no more look to her for aid; for it is her will to create one who has the power to create himself.”

Lowes Dickinson

Create yourself each and every day, and never forget that you can.

Consciousness

“If we return for a moment to the analogy of an aeroplane, what is the reason why our aeroplane cannot fly? Naturally the first reason because we do not know the machine, how to work it and how to put it in motion. And the second reason is that the result of this ignorance the machine works at a very slow speed. The effect of this slow speed is much greater than if we compare a horse-carriage and an aeroplane.

“All study, all thinking and investigation must have one aim, one purpose in view, and this aim must be attaining consciousness. It is useless to study oneself without this purpose. There are reasons to study oneself only if one has already realised that one does not have consciousness and one wishes to attain it. Otherwise it becomes just futile.

“Attaining consciousness is connected with the gradual liberation from mechanicalness, for man as he is is fully and completely under mechanical laws.

“The more a man attains consciousness, the more he leaves mechanicalness, which means he becomes more free from accidental laws.”

Tomorrow I will conclude this four part piece on consciousness, with the help of Ouspensky.

We all hear and know a little about consciousness, but the question we must ask ourselves is; do we want it? If we don’t then we can carry on as always. But, if we do then we must make efforts to attain it.

Man: an Egg or a Bird?

“This system turns everything we know or ever thought of upside down. It cannot be reconciled with ordinary psychological ideas. We have to decide how we are to see man: as an egg or as a bird. And if we see him as an egg we must not ascribe to him properties of a bird. When we see him as an egg the whole psychology becomes different: all human life becomes the life of embryos, of incomplete beings. And for some the meaning of life becomes the possibility of passing to another state.

“It is very important to understand what is a complete being and what is an incomplete being, because if this is not understood from the beginning it will be difficult to go further. Perhaps an example will help to illustrate what I mean.

“Let us compare a horse-carriage with an aeroplane. An aeroplane has many possibilities that an ordinary carriage does not have, but at the same time an aeroplane can be used as an ordinary carriage. It would be very clumsy and inconvenient and very expensive, but you can attach two horses to it and travel in an aeroplane by road.

“Suppose the man who has this aeroplane does not know that it has an engine and can move by itself and suppose he learns about the engine- then he can dispense with the horses and use it as a motor car. But it will still be too clumsy.

“Suppose the man studies this machine and discovers that it can fly. Certainly it will have many advantages which he missed when he used the aeroplane as a carriage.

“This is what we are doing with ourselves; we use ourselves as a carriage, when we could fly. But examples are one thing and facts are another. There is no need of allegories and analogies, for we can speak about actual facts if we begin to study consciousness in the right way.”

P. D. Oupensky. The Fourth Way. pg. 28

Anything in quotation marks in the following posts will come from this part of the book.

Mans Possible Development

There are many teachings that one can bring to life. I will not name them but i’m sure you can imagine some religious or spiritual practices that could enrich your life.

This week I will be trying to impart a certain idea in the blogs that follow this introduction. But first I would like to stress one important point. This system in which the idea comes, belongs to the class of system which regards man as an incomplete being and study him from the point of view of his possible development.

Man can be conscious, but at present he is not. It must be recognised that man lives below his legitimate level. There are several other things that man can attain, but for now I will stick to just one idea.

Tomorrow I will share a brilliant quote from Ouspensky. An allegory that shows wonderfully how man lives on a much lower level than is possible. From there I will continue on this theme for two more days.

If this blog interests you and you will be reading tomorrows, please click the like button or leave a short comment so I am aware of peoples involvement.