Chapter#01

"Glimpses of Truth" "Man is a machine" governed by external influences. "Subjective" and "objective" art. DRAFT#3

General observations for this chapter:

(1)Man is a machine. (2) What art is and the difference between subjective and objective art. (3) How does Socrates' metaphor living in a cave relate to "Glimpses of Truth"? It is also important to read this chapter as a literary work and observe Ouspensky's relization what he encounters in Gurdjieff. (Mr.G does not come from Mars,he is just like anybody else: HIS BEHAVIOR, LIKE THAT OF ANY OTHER MAN, IS THOROUGHLY CONDITIONED BY HIS ORIGINS, HIS UPBRINGING, AND THE CIRCUMSTANCES OF HIS LIFE. No hidden agenda other than he's also trying to make a living by selling secrets.)
Sayings of Richard Liebow: There's something like a window of opportunty, try not to miss it, because it may not come again. Also when we finished a section of our meeting He often used to ask "Have we adequetly treated this subject?"
Objectives(Celok):Meditation. Start meditating.

Outline Points
Return from India. The war and the"search for the miraculous". Old thoughts. The questions of schools. Plans for further travels. The east and Europe A notice in a Moscow newspaper. Lectures on India. The meeting with G. A "disguised man". The first talk. G's opinion on schools G's group. "Glimpses of Truth." This article can be found in "Views from the Real World" by the early students of Gurdieff and it begins with the Ballet "The Struggle of the Magicians" (How strange it seems that the encounter was fated. From that momenton Ouspensky's life has changed) About the ballet: It seem that Nijinsky knew of the movements. I think I saw a photograph of the legendary impresario Serge Diaghilev , Igor Stravinsky, Matisse and Gurdjieff in Paris. Further meetings and talks. The Organization of G.'s Moscow group. The question of payment and of means of the work. The question of secrecy and of the obligation accepted by the pupils. A talk about the East. "Philosophy," "theory," and "practice." How was the system found. G's ideas. "Man is a machine" governed by external influences. Everything "happens." Nobody "does" anything. In order to "do," it is necessary "to be." A man is responsible for his actions; a machine is not responsible. Is psychology necessary for the study of machines? The promise of "facts." Can wars be stopped? A talk about the planets and the moon as living beings. The "intelligence" of the sun and the earth. "Subjective" and "objective" art. (See chapter #14 for some additonal explonations on objective and subjective knowledge.)

Notes:
Pythagoras of Samos (Probably between 580 and 572 BC) was an Ionian (Greek) philosopher and the founder of the religious movement called Pythagoreanism. He is often revered as a great mathematician, mystic and scientist; however some have questioned the scope of his contributions to mathematics or natural philosophy. His name led him to be associated with Pythian Apollo; Aristippus explained his name by saying, "He spoke (agor-) the truth no less than did the Pythian (Pyth-)," and Iamblichus tells the story that the Pythia prophesied that his pregnant mother would give birth to a man supremely beautiful, wise, and of benefit to humankind. [3] He is best known for the Pythagorean theorem which bears his name. Known as "the father of numbers", Pythagoras made influential contributions to philosophy and religious teaching in the late 6th century BC. Because legend and obfuscation cloud his work even more than with the other pre-Socratics, one can say little with confidence about his life and teachings. We do know that Pythagoras and his students believed that everything was related to mathematics and that numbers were the ultimate reality and, through mathematics, everything could be predicted and measured in rhythmic patterns or cycles. According to Iamblichus, Pythagoras once said that "number is the ruler of forms and ideas and the cause of gods and demons." He was the first man to call himself a philosopher, or lover of wisdom,[4] and Pythagorean ideas exercised a marked influence on Plato. Unfortunately, very little is known about Pythagoras because none of his writings have survived. Many of the accomplishments credited to Pythagoras may actually have been accomplishments of his colleagues and successors.
Parmenides of Elea (Probably around early 5th century BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher born in Elea, a Hellenic city on the southern coast of Italy. Parmenides was a student of Ameinias and the founder of the School of Elea, which also included Zeno of Elea and Melissus of Samos. Parmenides is one of the most significant of the pre-Socratic philosophers. His only known work, conventionally titled 'On Nature' is a poem, which has only survived in fragmentary form. Approximately 150 lines of the poem remain today; reportedly the original text had 3,000 lines. It is known, however, that the work originally divided into three parts: A poem, which introduced the entire work, A section known as "The way of truth" (aletheia), and A section known as "The way of appearance/opinion" (doxa). The poem is a narrative sequence in which the narrator travels "beyond the beaten paths of mortal men" to receive a revelation from an unnamed goddess (generally thought to be Persephone) on the nature of reality. Aletheia, an estimated 90% of which has survived, and doxa, most of which no longer exists, are then presented as the spoken revelation of the goddess without any accompanying narrative.
Xenophanes of Colophon Xenophánes; (570 – 480 BC) was also a Greek philosopher, poet, and social and religious critic. Our knowledge of his views comes from his surviving poetry, all of which are fragments passed down as quotations by later Greek writers. His poetry criticized and satirized a wide range of ideas, including the belief in the pantheon of anthropomorphic gods and the Greeks' veneration of athleticism. He is the earliest Greek poet who claims explicitly to be writing for future generations, creating "fame that will reach all of Greece, and never die while the Greek kind of songs survives."
Glossary:
Buddah with the saphire eyes in Sri Lanka:Dehiwela Dehiwela, once a thriving fishing village outside Colombo, is now a suburb of the city. Time was when tourists came to Dehiwela to watch the daily fish auctions held on the beach, where shark, sawfish, dogfish, and various species of ray, were paraded. Now tourists come to Dehiwela mainly to visit the Zoological Gardens. Another attraction for the tourist at Dehiwela is the Buddhist Subodharmaya temple, a delightfully tranquil spot in the bustle of the suburbs, which features a reclining state of the Buddha described by the mystic P. D. Ouspensky as the Buddha with the sapphire eyes. It was considered by him to be no less than one of the six spiritual wonders of the world.
The Sphinx:Guardian of the Horizon The Sphinx of Giza is a symbol that has represented the essence of Egypt for thousands of years. Even with all of the pictures that we see of the Sphinx, nothing can really prepare you for the time that you finally see the Sphinx with your own eyes.
The Cathedrals:In the Middle Ages, the main purpose of the cathedral was religion. Cathedrals were expected to carry out many services a day. The medieval people believed that was how they could earn their place in heaven, among other things.

Additional Notes: What about the 10th planet? 7-27-05
Auguste Comte(1798 - 1857) was a French positivist thinker and came up with the term of sociology to name the new science made by Saint-SimonOne. His legavy is the universal law that Comte saw at work in all sciences he called the 'law of three phases'. It is by his statement of this law that he is best known in the English-speaking world; namely, that society has gone through three phases: Theological, Metaphysical, and Scientific. He also gave the name "Positive" to the last of these because of the polysemous connotations of the word. The Theological phase was seen from the perspective of 19th century France as preceding the Enlightenment, in which man's place in society and society's restrictions upon man were referenced to God. By the "Metaphysical" phase, he was not referring to the Metaphysics of Aristotle or any other ancient Greek philosopher, for Comte was rooted in the problems of French society subsequent to the revolution of 1789. This Metaphysical phase involved the justification of universal rights as being on a vauntedly higher plane than the authority of any human ruler to countermand, although said rights were not referenced to the sacred beyond mere metaphor. What he announced by his term of the Scientific phase, which came into being after the failure of the revolution and of Napoleon, was that people could find solutions to social problems and bring them into force despite the proclamations of human rights or prophecy of the will of God. In this regard he was similar to Karl Marx and Jeremy Bentham. For its time, this idea of a Scientific phase was considered up-to-date, although from a later standpoint it is too derivative of classical physics and academic history. The other universal law he called the 'encyclopedic law'. By combining these laws, Comte developed a systematic and hierarchical classification of all sciences, including inorganic physics (astronomy, earth science and chemistry) and organic physics (biology and for the first time, physique sociale, later renamed sociologie). This idea of a special science—not the humanities, not metaphysics—for the social was prominent in the 19th century and not unique to Comte. The ambitious—many would say grandiose—way that Comte conceived of it, however, was unique. Comte saw this new science, sociology, as the last and greatest of all sciences, one that would include all other sciences, and which would integrate and relate their findings into a cohesive whole. Comte’s explanation of the Positive philosophy introduced the important relationship between theory, practice and human understanding of the world. On page 27 of the 1855 printing of Harriet Martineau’s translation of The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte, we see his observation that, “If it is true that every theory must be based upon observed facts, it is equally true that facts can not be observed without the guidance of some theory. Without such guidance, our facts would be desultory and fruitless; we could not retain them: for the most part we could not even perceive them. (Comte, A. (1974 reprint). The positive philosophy of Auguste Comte freely translated and condensed by Harriet Martineau. New York, NY: AMS Press. (Original work published in 1855, New York, NY: Calvin Blanchard, p. 27.) He coined the word "altruism" to refer to what he believed to be a moral obligations of individuals to serve others and place their interests above one's own. He opposed the idea of individual rights, maintaining that they were not consistent with this supposed ethical obligation (Catechisme Positiviste). As already mentioned, Comte formulated the law of three stages, one of the first theories of the social evolutionism: that human development (social progress) progresses from the theological stage, in which nature was mythically conceived and man sought the explanation of natural phenomena from supernatural beings, through metaphysical stage in which nature was conceived of as a result of obscure forces and man sought the explanation of natural phenomena from them until the final positive stage in which all abstract and obscure forces are discarded, and natural phenomena are explained by their constant relationship. This progress is forced through the development of human mind, and increasing application of thought, reasoning and logic to the understanding of world. During his lifetime, Comte's work was sometimes viewed skeptically because he elevated Postivism to a religion and named himself the Pope of Positivism. Comte coined the term "sociology", and is usually regarded as the first sociologist. His emphasis on the interconnectedness of different social elements was a forerunner of modern functionalism. Nevertheless, like many others from his time, certain elements of his work are regarded as eccentric and unscientific, and his grand vision of sociology as the center-piece of all the sciences has not come to fruition. His emphasis on a quantitative, mathematical basis for decision-making remains with us today. It is a foundation of the modern notion of Positivism, modern quantitative statistical analysis, and business decision-making. His description of the continuing cyclical relationship between theory and practice is seen in modern business systems of Total Quality Management and Continuous Quality Improvement where advocates describe a continuous cycle of theory and practice through the four-part cycle of plan, do, check, and act. Despite his advocacy of quantitative analysis, Comte saw a limit in its ability to help explain social phenomena.

Werckmeister Harmonies (17th century German theorist: Anreas Werckmeister who believed that hevenly constallations emitted harmonies created by God to influence man. Some resemblence of Mr.G influencing humanaty to war with the question "Is it possible to stop war?". The Hungarian filmmaker Bela Tarr made a film Workmeister's harmanies from a book by Krasznahorkai "Hajnalban valo Lazadas"

I have no questions of any kind except the questions I need to ask somebody, [like] "Where can I rent a car?" "What is the quickest way to go to Brussels?" "Which way to Rotterdam -- this road or that road?" That's all. For such questions, there are always people who can help you. But these other kinds of questions have no answers. U.G. Khrisnamurti