On Love
The focus of attention of the higher emotional center is self-consciousness. At the same time, the capacity to know another exists at this level.
Read More…Author: William Page
Self-Remembering and Being
If man is mechanical, if he has no single ‘I’ or self, then what is it that remembers? The short answer to this question is that it is our accumulated ‘being’ that remembers. But it is difficult to see the long body of our being. Our being is usually fragmented by lying, imagination and identification. […]
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When We Talk about Freedom
When we talk about freedom, we’re speaking about the work an individual to achieve freedom from unnecessary laws. In order to understand this, it is first necessary to see man as a microcosmos. Man is a microcosmos because, like the universe, he has within him layers of realities. What this means is that man’s inner life […]
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Recurrence, Higher Dimensions, and Time Travel
If reincarnation and recurrence exist, which seems likely to me, then we will be able to travel to the future and the past. Only first we have to do the work of the moment; we have to be present and use our attention and focus to fashion a lighter and more durable vehicle.
Really, we are all time travelers, and our physical bodies are the time machines that we so badly want to invent.
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Philosophy, Theory, and Practice
If you study only the philosophical side of Gurdjieff’s ideas—its history, its cosmology, or its connection to the major religions—you may never connect to higher centers. This isn’t wrong. It’s fine to be a scholar. But the primary purpose of the system is to teach people to awaken. You cannot awaken unless you are willing to make inner efforts and take a practical approach to the knowledge.
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On the Faculty of Judgment
Who We Admire Any man can speak truly; but to speak with order, wisely, and competently, of that few men are capable. ~ Montaigne There is something ridiculous about a learned man who lacks the discipline to use knowledge in a way that benefits his soul. Nor would we glorify the ignorant who move from action […]
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On Finding Oneself
The very idea of finding one’s self is problematic because we are the never the same. If you think you have found yourself—a solid, unchanging self—wouldn’t that imply that you’ve stopped growing?
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The Law of Seven
If we understood the law of octaves, we could see more clearly how the universe unfolds, or how a tree grows, or how learning requires special efforts at certain, very specific, points.
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Reality as Higher Centers
The inner work that leads to a connection to higher centers is individual and takes patience, struggle, and time. There are no shortcuts in this work because it follows natural laws. It is not a way that ends with a single revelatory experience. The achievement of this system is a regular connection with higher centers, and that requires a buildup of a particular energy, and that energy is subject to organic laws.
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We Always Make a Profit
Can we always make a profit? Toward the end of In Search of the Miraculous, Ouspensky describes a newspaper reporter’s conversation with Gurdjieff at a train station. Gurdjieff made a number of enigmatic statements about business and the Russian Revolution. The reporter asked, “Don’t you make profits, too?” [Gurdjieff] smiled… and said with gravity: “We always make a […]
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