A CHANGE OF STATE

A CHANGE OF STATE

 We are in an information age that trumps experience. Watching Television (which I call the "pseudo-life machine" because the amygdala and limbric sections of the brain contain no negatives) gives the organism the same sense as if it was living the experience. Therefore, we must exclude much of what we call experience to the realm of the phantasmagoria, as well as reading books especially of fiction, which suffice for the ordinary person as a substitute for actually facing their own life and 'living it'.

Conscious Influence C can only come from direct contact with "one who knows", and must be a direct transmission. Otherwise it becomes influence B (like the exoteric outer trappings of religions) or A (the ordinary 'world and all it would seem to contain) --  where it is said that the "gods are asleep", as in the Kundabuffer, which is the opposite of the Kundalini, according to Gurdjieff's vernacular. 

But let me take Christianity as an example; during the first three centuries (334 YEARS), one had to keep the fact that they were Christian a secret or face a fierce demand to also acknowledge the Emperor as a deity. Failing that could lead to death, period. So the Christians met in the underground catacombs or at each others houses at great bodily risk.

 Now let's move to Mr. Gurdjieff during the second world war. Paris was under strict curfew by the Nazis, and going to visit Mr. Gurdjieff in the evening for the dinners and meetings carried with it the risk of being shot on sight. So the Work enters the world at great peril of turning into it's opposite, as the Enneagram has done, having been turned into a kind of "astrology of types".

 But the real work remains, as in the Lord's Prayer, which starts with these words, (from the Aramaic): "Father/Mother/Breather of ALL, ye ARE Heaven; may your "Name" be kept protected, secret and sacred." Now, who does the Lord's name be protected from and kept secret and sacred? US: You and Me! Otherwise it becomes degraded and becomes influence B and ultimately A. So the question in this information age is "how do we protect the work from ourselves?"

 In the book "Our Life With Mr. Gurdjieff" by the De Hartmann's, there is an interesting passage: Gurdjieff tells his students (and I paraphrase, not having the book in front of me): "I could lift you to Heaven, but you could not stay there; I could raise you to 100 degrees Celsius (boiling point of water which involves a change of state and greater freedom - water vapor is not under the laws that govern liquid water), but you would return to your ordinary state: YOU must learn to raise your own temperature to 100 degrees Celsius". What this implies is that we must undertake INTENTIONAL SUFFERING (Not "Voluntary Suffering", which is another thing altogether) we must OURSELVES create the friction within ourselves to initiate a permanent change of state, which only change of state can place us under higher laws. Ice, Water, Vapor, Plasma. THESE are the equivalent states that we find ourselves in. Opaque, Translucent, Transparent and finally Radiant. But WHO has the WILL power required to place oneself under such intentional pressure? Practically NOBODY. THIS is the reason why one must make direct contact with "One Who Knows", or barring that (we can't ALL have the highest teacher -- we would implode, explode or be burned to a crisp), we must make contact with a group containing SOME who know more than we do, which is at the beginning (and in some cases forever) absolutely essential, because we do not know what a man of higher being even looks like. Gurdjieff told Ouspensky that a conscious man might even look "more mechanical" than the average Joe. We cannot know the being of others before developing higher being bodies in ourselves, which require actual "changes of state", as modern science would put it.