In Search Of The Miraculous(zijn wij vergeten wie wij waren?)

Ik ben momenteel bezig met het lezen van twee boeken, The Fire From Within van Carlos Castaneda en In Search Of The Miraculous geschreven door P.D. Ouspensky en wow ik ben momenteel bij hoofdstuk 3 van miraculous en ik moet zeggen dat als jij ooit je avroeg, wat het doel in je leven is, waarom je hier bent, waarom de mens zo ''robotisch'' is, zoals werk werk school thuis werk werk herhaal procces tot je dood bent, waar het om draait, als jij voelt dat er meer bestaat dan de illusie die we nu zien als jij voelt dat er iets is wat niet klopt aan mensheid en zijn geschiedenis dan moet je hier mee beginnen, de boek is zo mooi en perfect opgebouwd dat ik het niet kan beschrijven, ik heb nog nooit een boek met zo een duidelijkheid gelezen.

Nu is het natuurlijk wel zo dat ik al bekend was met de ideen van G.I Gurdjieff die Ouspensky in zijn boek beschrijft, dus is het mischien daardoor dat ik het veel beter begrijp, je zult het leven echt in een ander licht zien dan wat je nu om je heen ziet, maar ja sommige mensen zijn er niet klaar voor, realiteit boeit voor hun niet, wat boeit is een fantasie droom waar ze in leven tot ze vergeten worden en als een droom uit het verleden zullen ze worden herinnerd, kritisch nadenken bestaat niet meer voor hun, en hoeveel bewijs ze je ook toont, dan nog zullen ze het niet geloven, want de fantasie(illusie) wereld waar ze mee opgegroeid zijn is hun realiteit geworden.

de media is een groot voorbeeld, iedereen gelooft wat de t.v je vertelt zonder erbij na te denken, zonder eigen onderzoek te doen, realiteit boeit mensen niet meer en daarom zullen ze het onvermijdelijke niet zien aankomen.
zoals met CIA-Qaida..oh sorry ik bedoel Al-Qaida.

een stukje uit In Search Of The Miraculous geschreven door Ouspensky tijdens de 1ste wereldoorlog.

"People are so unlike one another," I said. "I do not think it would be possible to

bring them all under the same heading. There are savages, there are mechanized

people, there are intellectual people, there are geniuses."

"Quite right," said G., "people are very unlike one another, but the real difference

between people you do not know and cannot see. The difference of which you speak

simply does not exist. This must be understood. All the people you see, all the people

you know, all the people you may get to know, are machines, actual machines working

solely under the power of external influences, as you yourself said. Machines they are

born and machines they die. How do savages and intellectuals come into this? Even

now, at this very moment, while we are talking, several millions of machines are

trying to annihilate one another. What is the difference between them? Where are the

savages and where are the intellectuals? They are all alike . . .

"But there is a possibility of ceasing to be a machine. It is of this we must think and

not about the different kinds of machines that exist. Of course there are different

machines; a motorcar is a machine, a gramophone is a machine, and a gun is a

machine. But what of it? It is the same thing—they are all machines."

In connection with this conversation I remember another.

"What is your opinion of modem psychology?" I once asked G. with the intention

of introducing the subject of psychoanalysis which I had mistrusted from the time

when it had first appeared. But G. did not let me get as far as that.

"Before speaking of psychology we must be clear to whom it refers and to whom it

does not refer," he said. "Psychology refers to people, to men, to human beings. What

psychology" (he emphasized the word) "can there be in relation to machines?

Mechanics, not psychology, is necessary for the study of machines. That is why we

begin with mechanics. It is a very long way yet to psychology."

"Can one stop being a machine?" I asked.

"Ah! That is the question," said G. "If you had asked such questions more often we

might, perhaps, have got somewhere in our talks. It is possible to stop being a

machine, but for that it is necessary first of all to know the machine. A machine, a real

machine, does not know itself and cannot know itself. When a machine knows itself it

is then no longer a machine, at least, not such a machine as it was before. It already

begins to be responsible for its actions."

"This means, according to you, that a man is not responsible for his actions?" I

asked.

"A man" (he emphasized this word) "is responsible. A machine is not responsible."

In the course of one of our talks I asked G.:

"What, in your opinion, is the best preparation for the study of your method? For

instance, is it useful to study what is called 'occult' or 'mystical' literature?"

In saying this I had in mind more particularly the "Tarot" and the literature on the

"Tarot."

"Yes," said G. "A great deal can be found by reading. For instance, take yourself:

you might already know a great deal if you knew how to read. I mean that, if you

understood everything you have read in your life, you would already know what you

are looking for now. If you understood everything you have written in your own book,

what is it called?"—he made something altogether impossible out of the words

"Tertium Organum"—"I should come and bow down to you and beg you to teach me.

But you do not understand either what you read or what you write. You do not even

understand what the word 'understand' means. Yet understanding is essential, and

reading can be useful only if you understand what you read. But, of course, no book

can give real preparation. So it is impossible to say which is better. What a man

knows well" (he emphasized the word "well")—"that is his preparation. If a man

knows how to make coffee well or how to make boots well, then it is already possible

to talk to him. The trouble is that nobody knows anything well. Everything is known

just anyhow, superficially."

This was another of those unexpected turns which G. gave to his explanations. G.'s

words, in addition to their ordinary meaning, undoubtedly contained another,

altogether different, meaning. I had already begun to realize that, in order to arrive at

this hidden meaning in G.'s words, one had to begin with their usual and simple

meaning. G.'s words were always significant in their ordinary sense, although this was

not the whole of their significance. The wider or deeper significance remained hidden

for a long time.

There is another talk which has remained in my memory.

I asked G. what a man had to do to assimilate this teaching.

"What to do?" asked G. as though surprised. "It is impossible to do anything. A

man must first of all understand certain things. He has thousands of false ideas and

false conceptions, chiefly about himself, and he must get rid of some of them before

beginning to acquire anything new. Otherwise the new will be built on a wrong

foundation and the result will be worse than before."

"How can one get rid of false ideas?" I asked. "We depend on the forms of our

perception. False ideas are produced by the forms of our perception."

G. shook his head.

"Again you speak of something different,"' he said. "You speak of errors arising

from perceptions but I am not speaking of these. Within the limits of given perceptions

man can err more or err less. As I have said before, man's chief delusion is his

conviction that he can do. All people think that they can do, all people want to do, and

the first question all people ask is what they are to do. But actually nobody does

anything and nobody can do anything. This is the first thing that must be understood.

Everything happens. All that befalls a man, all that is done by him, all that comes from

him—all this happens. And it happens in exactly the same way as rain falls as a result

of a change in the temperature in the higher regions of the atmosphere or the

surrounding clouds, as snow melts under the rays of the sun, as dust rises with the

wind.

"Man is a machine. All his deeds, actions, words, thoughts, feelings, convictions,

opinions, and habits are the results of external influences, external impressions. Out of

himself a man cannot produce a single thought, a single action. Everything he says,

does, thinks, feels—all this happens. Man cannot discover anything, invent anything.

It all happens.

"To establish this fact for oneself, to understand it, to be convinced of its truth,

means getting rid of a thousand illusions about man, about his being creative and

consciously organizing his own life, and so on. There is nothing of this kind.

Everything happens—popular movements, wars, revolutions, changes of government,

all this happens. And it happens in exactly the same way as everything happens in the

life of individual man. Man is born, lives, dies, builds houses, writes books, not as he

wants to, but as it happens. Everything happens. Man does not love, hate, desire—all

this happens.

"But no one will ever believe you if you tell him he can do nothing. This is the most

offensive and the most unpleasant thing you can tell people. It is particularly

unpleasant and offensive because it is the truth, and nobody wants to know the truth.

"When you understand this it will be easier for us to talk. But it is one thing to

understand with the mind and another thing to feel it with one's "whole mass,' to be

really convinced that it is so and never forget it.

"With this question of doing" (G. emphasized the word), "yet another thing is

connected. It always seems to people that others invariably do things wrongly, not in

the way they should be done. Everybody always thinks he could do it better. They do

not understand, and do not want to understand, that what is being done, and

particularly what has already been done in one way, cannot be, and could not have

been, done in another way. Have you noticed how everyone now is talking about the

war? Everyone has his own plan, his own theory. Everyone finds that nothing is being

done in the way it ought to be done. Actually everything is being done in the only way

it can be done. If one thing could be dif-

ferent everything could be different. And then perhaps there would have been no war.

"Try to understand what I am saying: everything is dependent on everything else,

everything is connected, nothing is separate. Therefore everything is going in the only

way it can go. If people were different everything would be different. They are what

they are, so everything is as it is."

This was very difficult to swallow.

"Is there nothing, absolutely nothing, that can be done?" I asked.

"Absolutely nothing."

"And can nobody do anything?"

"That is another question. In order to do it is necessary to be. And it is necessary

first to understand what 10 be means. If we continue our talks you will see that we use

a special language and that, in order to talk with us, it is necessary to learn this

language. It is not worth while talking in ordinary language because, in that language,

it is impossible to understand one another. This also, at the moment, seems strange to

you. But it is true. In order to understand it is necessary to learn another language. In

the language which people speak they cannot understand one another. You will see

later on why this is so.

"Then one must learn to speak the truth. This also appears strange to you. You do

not realize that one has to learn to speak the truth. It seems to you that it is enough to

wish or to decide to do so. And I tell you that people comparatively rarely tell a

deliberate lie. In most cases they think they speak the truth. And yet they lie all the

time, both when they wish to lie and when they wish to speak the truth. They lie all the

time, both to themselves and to others. Therefore nobody ever understands either

himself or anyone else. Think—could there be such discord, such deep

misunderstanding, and such hatred towards the views and opinions of others, if people

were able to understand one another? But they cannot understand because they cannot

help lying. To speak the truth is the most difficult thing in the world; and one must

study a great deal and for a long time in order to be able to speak the truth. The wish

alone is not enough. To speak the truth one must know what the truth is and what a lie

is, and first of all in oneself. And this nobody wants to know."

Talks with G., and the unexpected turn he gave to every idea, interested me more

and more every day. But I had to go to Petersburg.

I remember my last talk with him.

I had thanked him for the consideration he had given me and for his explanations

which, I already saw, had changed many things for me.

"But all the same, you know, the most important thing is facts," I said. "If I could

see genuine and real facts of a new and unknown character, only they would finally

convince me that I am on the right way."

deze week zal ik het ook nog een beetje over Don Juan hebben en dat de principes van Don Juan vrijwel hetzelfde zijn als die van G.I Gurdjieff.

"'What do you expect?" said G. "People are machines. Machines have to be blind

and unconscious, they cannot be otherwise, and all their actions have to correspond to

their nature. Everything happens. No one does anything. 'Progress' and 'civilization,'

in the real meaning of these words, can appear only as the result of conscious efforts.

They cannot appear as the result of unconscious mechanical actions. And what conscious

effort can there be in machines? And if one machine is unconscious, then a

hundred machines are unconscious, and so are a thousand machines, or a hundred

thousand, or a million. And the unconscious activity of a million machines must

necessarily result in destruction and extermination. It is precisely in unconscious

involuntary manifestations that all evil lies. You do not yet understand and cannot

imagine all the results of this evil. But the time will come when you will understand."

With this, so far as I remember, the talk ended.