What keeps us out of the upper floors [the higher intellectual and emotional centers] of our mansion? Obstacles to higher levels of consciousness are abundant in daily life: they are our legacy from generations past. Perhaps the most central is identification, the basic flavor of ordinary waking state.
“In this state,” Gurdjieff noted, “man has no separate awareness. He is lost in whatever he happens to be doing, feeling, thinking. Because he is lost, immersed, not present to himself, this condition is known…as a state of waking sleep.”
Identification is the opposite of self-consciousness. In a state of identification one does not remember oneself. One is lost to oneself. Attention is directed outward, and no awareness is left over for inner states. And ordinary life is almost totally spent in states of identification.
The thinking of ordinary people occurs when something “occurs to one.” It is mechanical chatter, colored by lying, which is not under any control. Formatory apparatus, the moving part of intellectual center, is incapable of comprehending orders of truth higher than the dualistic: thus the ordinary individual is third-force blind. He sees things in terms of opposites — cause and effect, good and evil, truth and falsity, seeing duality not not trinity.
— Kathleen Riordan Speeth
“If a man could understand all the horror of the lives of ordinary people who are turning around in a circle of insignificant interests and insignificant aims, if he could understand what they are losing, he would understand that there can only be one thing that is serious for him — to escape from the general law, to be free. What can be serious for a man in prison who is condemned to death? Only one thing: How to save himself, how to escape: nothing else is serious.”
I just received notice that author Keith Buzzell will be holding a seminar in Salt Lake City, Utah, in November or December 2009 to explore the question: What is the relationship between spirituality and science. Buzzell explains the seminar as such:
“The Gurdjieff teaching heralds a new approach to the potential blending of these impulses. We propose to host a seminar, Science, Gurdjieff and Man’s Conception of God to further our understanding.”
Keith has been a student of the Gurdjieff teaching for over fifty years, and is a physician by profession. He has authored three books, Perspectives on Beelzebub’s Tales, Explorations in Active Mentation and Man–A Three-brained Being with his insights to date.
For those interested in attending the seminar, familiarity with one or more of Keith’s books is recommended, to facilitate a lively exchange. For specific information, please visit Fifth Press’ contact page and send a query email to Dr. Buzzell.