MindMatters: Gurdjieff, Death, and Help for the Dead with Joseph Azize

VooDoo6 Well said.

VooDoo6 You listened to this discussion?

Or you're just the digital first responder?

VooDoo6 [...]. This picture 4th down on left. [Link]
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VooDoo6 [...]. This picture 4th down on left. [Link]
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I couldn't find it! It wasn't labeled!

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Dwoods44 To study Gurdjieff is to study consciousness and the possibility of increasing consciousness. In this discussion with Joseph he is talking about the possibility of communicating and giving energy to individuals who have died, and this means that the discussion is about reality. If your reality is only what you can see, touch, hear, or sense, then Joseph’s possibility is imagination. If the reality Joseph speaks about is true, then your reality is imagination. What controls your perception of reality is your beliefs about what is possible? Western education promotes the idea that Religious teachings are imagination. The real problem is Western education is not education but instead an indoctrination into a materialist belief system.

The foundation for this exercise is what Joseph calls the “collective state”, a relative unity in intent for the 3 brains of man: the intellectual, the emotional, and the instinctive. In Ouspensky’s System development the instinctive is divided into instinctive and moving brains. The moving is concerned with all learned movement, speed and spatial relationships. The instinctive is the inborn responses to taste, smell, touch that determines danger or good for the body, as well as all the unseen physiology like the heart beating or digestion. As with any animal, the instinctive brain keeps you alive.

A further development of the 4 brain being psychology is that each brain is divided into an intellectual, emotional and moving/instinctive level . In the case of the moving brain, all movement is learned through the intellectual part. Once learned it is stored in the library of the moving part of the moving brain. The emotional is involved in the movement itself, the emotional thrill of riding a wave for a surfer. Once a movement, like riding a bike is learned and stored, riding a bike is simply playing the stored program, it becomes mechanical.

What is important in this knowledge, is that functioning simultaneously from the intellectual parts of the 4 brains brings one closer to self-remembering, to an activated higher brain. Then exercises are to move one from knowledge to being.

Also in the Ouspensky lineage is the recognition that each Teacher teaches based on their own brain center of gravity. Each individual has a dominant part of one of the 4 brains as part of their essence. Gurdjieff was an instinctive/moving Teacher, so his focus was exercises for movement and dance. Ouspensky was an intellectual Teacher who focused on words and ideas, many meetings. Jesus was probably an emotionally centered Teacher.

Then there are two other functions which no system of ordinary psychology divides and understands in the right way—instinctive function and moving function. Instinctive refers to the inner work of the organism: digestion of food, beating of the heart, breathing—these are instinctive functions. To instinctive function belong also ordinary senses—sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch, the feeling of cold and warmth, things like that; and this is all, really. Of outer movements, only simple reflexes belong to instinctive function, because more complicated reflexes belong to moving function. It is very easy to distinguish between instinctive and moving functions. We do not have to learn anything that belongs to instinctive function, we are born with the capacity to use all the instinctive functions. Moving functions, on the other hand, all have to be learned— a child learns to walk, to write and so on. There is a very great difference between the two functions, since there is nothing inherent in moving functions, and instinctive functions are all inherent.

So in self-observation it is necessary first of all to divide these four functions and to classify at once everything that you observe, saying, 'This is intellectual function', 'This is emotional function' and so on.

If you practise this observation for some time you may notice some strange things. For instance, you will find that what is really difficult in observing is that you forget about it. You start to observe, and your emotions connect with some kind of thought and you forget about self-observation.

Again, after some time, if you continue this effort to observe, which is a new function not used in the same way in ordinary life, you will notice another interesting thing—that generally you do not remember yourself. If you could be aware of yourself all the time, then you would be able to observe all the time, or in any case as long as you liked. But because you cannot remember yourself, you cannot concentrate; and this is why you will have to admit that you have no will. If you could remember yourself, you would have will and could do what you liked. But you cannot remember yourself, you cannot be aware of yourself and so you have no will. You may sometimes have will for a short time, but it turns to something else and you forget about it.

We call them centres: intellectual centre, emotional centre,moving centre and instinctive centre. They are quite independent. Each centre has itsown memory, its own imagination and its own will. Besides, moving centre also controls dreams,and not only dreams at night, but dreams in waking state—day-dreams. And since mostof our life passes either in real dreams or in day-dreams, study of the moving functionis most important. We think that the intellectual and emotional side is more important,but actually most of our life is controlled by instinctive and moving minds. So moving centre has many useful and many useless functions.

I want to tell you a little more about centres which will help you to understand the situation. Some centres are divided into two halves— positive and negative. This division is very clear in the intellectual and the instinctive centres. In the intellectualcentre it is 'yes' and 'no', affirmation and negation. All the work of the intellectualcentre consists of comparing. The division in the instinctive centre is quite plain:pleasure—pain. All instinctive life is governed by this. At a superficial glance it seemsthat the emotional centre also consists of two halves— pleasant and unpleasant emotions. But it is not really so. All our violent and depressing emotions and,generally, most of our mental suffering has the same character—it is unnatural, and ourorganism has no real centre for these negative emotions; they work with the help of an artificial centre. This artificial centre—a kind of swelling—is gradually created in us from early childhood, for a child grows surrounded by people with negative emotions and imitates them.

Q. Are instinctive emotions not negative?

A. They may be negative, but they are rightfully so. They are all useful. The negative half of the instinctive centre is a watchman warning us of danger. In the emotional centre negative emotions are very harmful.Then each half of a centre is divided into three parts: intellectual part, motional part and moving or mechanical part. The moving part of each centre is the most mechanical and the most often used. Generally we use only the mechanical parts of centres. Even the emotional parts are used only occasionally; as to the intellectual parts, they are very seldom used in ordinary conditions. This shows how we limit ourselves, how we use only a little part, the weakest part, of our organism.It is very easy to distinguish these three parts when we begin to observe ourselves.Mechanical parts do not need attention. Emotional parts need strong interest or identification, attention without effort or intention, for attention is drawn and kept by the attraction of the object itself. And in the intellectual parts you have to control your attention.When you get accustomed to control attention, you will see at once what I mean.

First the character of the action will show you which centre you are in, and then observation of attention will show you the part of centre. It is particularly important to observe the emotional parts and to study the things that attract and keep the attention, because they produce imagination Study of attention is a very important part of self-study, and if you begin to observe this division of centres into parts, in addition to the division of centres themselves, it will give you the possibility of coming to smaller details and will help you to study attention.

They can all work separately, but certainly if one could control the intellectual parts of all centres and make them work together, that would be the way to higher centres. Intellectual parts will not make up a centre by themselves, but their combined work will produce better work than they can do separately..Negative emotions are created from material taken from the instinctive centre. This material legitimatelybelongs to the instinctive centre and is wrongly borrowed from it. We arein a very strange state, because positive emotions do not belong to our ordinary emotional centre but to the higher emotional centre, and negative emotions do not belong to the ordinary emotional centre but exist in anartificial centre. The emotional centre borrows material from the instinc-tive, and with the negative half of the instinctive centre and the help of imagination and identification, it creates negative emotions. Destroying them is a very difficult work; but you must realize that as long as negative emotions exist no development is possible, because development means development of all there is in man. Negative emotions cannot develop... Energy can be distracted from the right places and put in the wrong places by negative emotion. As long as one cannot control negative emotions one cannot control anything else as regards instinctive centre. There is only one way of saving energy [struggle with/non-expression of negative emotions] and many ways of wasting it.

Dwoods44 Thank you for the quotes. Can you link it?

Dwoods44 Yes, I figured the Fourth Way; but could you give a page reference. Thanks.

danny esq "Ye be gods" man wanting to be his own god, seems to of been around for a while. Contacting the dead is prohibited also, but it won't serve as a warning to many.

Horrible topic, who seriously wants to get involved with it?

danny esq Gen 3.5

It is whimsical to us to see him still clinging to his old pride, when we know all about him, and his past and present status, which latter is rather low, and all the time he is trying to think he is hiding his thoughts from us. With such their instructors have to exercise much patience, which is also very good training for them.

Your quote warns, or rather informs us, that our sins or shortcomings will be obvious, even if not to us. We will have to account for everything, which sounds like it could be fun, freeing, revelatory, or tedious. If there is an account of sins, then forgiveness seems almost assured, since it is you learning from the accounting. It'd be more worrying if you could quote a passage saying there will be no accounting. Hopefully, there is more than the comprehension of a child for someone reading this.

Leviticus 19:31 Regard not them that have familiar spirits , neither seek after wizards, to be defiled by them: I am the LORD your God.

Leviticus 20:6 “And the soul that turneth after such as have familiar spirits , and after wizards, to go a whoring after them, I will even set my face against that soul, and will cut him off from among his people.”

Leviticus 20:27 “A man also or woman that hath a familiar spirit , or that is a wizard, shall surely be put to death: they shall stone them with stones: their blood shall be upon them.”

Deuteronomy 18:9-14 9 When thou art come into the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee, thou shalt not learn to do after the abominations of those nations. /10 There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch, /11 Or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits , or a wizard, or a necromancer. /12 For all that do these things are an abomination unto the LORD: and because of these abominations the LORD thy God doth drive them out from before thee. /13 Thou shalt be perfect with the LORD thy God. /14 For these nations, which thou shalt possess, hearkened unto observers of times, and unto diviners: but as for thee, the LORD thy God hath not suffered thee so to do.

Isaiah 8:19 “And when they shall say unto you, Seek unto them that have familiar spirits , and unto wizards that peep, and that mutter: should not a people seek unto their God? for the living to the dead?”

Psalm 115:17 “The dead praise not the LORD, neither any that go down into silence.”

John 4:1 “ Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God : because many false prophets are gone out into the world.”

Matthew 22:32 “I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.”

danny esq [...] quoting citing the verses[...]

Just saying.

"The goal of abolishing the white race is on its face so desirable that some may find it hard to believe that it could incur any opposition other than from committed white supremacists... KEEP BASHING THE DEAD white males, and the live ones, and the females too, until the social construct known as 'the white race' is destroyed - not 'deconstructed' but destroyed."

If your fumbling about in the esoteric darkness never knowing anything, why not step into the light where things can be easily seen AND understood?

Murderers don't mourn their victims either.

Dwoods44 In my view, the purpose of the Gurdjieff work is to awaken ones own consciousness, [...]

You have to understand that in some unknown way you chose these parents and your life.

You have to understand that your parents have their own path of consciousness that they are on. Can we through this exercise, heal some of the damage they have done to themselves, or pay off some karmic debt for ourselves or for them? I don’t know and sometimes we need to wait and see what door opens for direction[...]