Chapter#04

The line of knowledge and the line of being. Seven gradation of the concept "man". The third force. Draft #3

Main ideas in this chapter:(1) The difference between knowledge and being. As Ralp Colby would say "You can't talk much about something, that you havn't done.(2)Describing the different kinds of men and its meaning. (3) Organic Life on Earth and the Milky Way.
Sayings of Richard Liebow: Richard was very pragmatic. (Pragmatism is the American contribution to Philosophy.) After every meeting he used to ask us "Have you learned something today?" Have you leaned something that you can take to the bank? He also used to say "We're preparing to do a Bank job." I'm not sure about that he said the following, it is possibly that got this someplace else "One thing I know for sure is that I don't trully understand all what Ouspensky is saying, but it doesn't matter. I'm only going to get what I want to get anyway." However, I know this for sure that he said this "Don't worry Frankie you'll get it all. More over you are only going to get what your Spirit wants you to get. So we can play the Divine Fool and go on and on and on about who knows what and in the end, maybe all we'll have done is providing some food for our mental, emotional and spiritual bodies. Food that our spirits requested and Ouspensky delivered." Also "Nothing of any eternal significance can be spoken in this language anyway. So it doesn't matter. The real work is being done in the Heart, it isn't in the words." It is in the synergy that we all form together when we meet on Monday nights. The words just stimulate insights in us and we discover things that we already knew but we didn't know that we knew it. If we are lucky, you'll share with us the insights that were stimulated in you so that we can have new insights stimulated in us and we can all share them back and forth that is why we work in groups. Everything that is being said leads to that. We are all trying to wake up!
Objectives:Slow down and pause frequently just to be present.

Outline Points
General impressions of G.'s system. Looking backwards. One of the fundemental proposations. The line of knowledge and the line of being. Being on different levels. Divergence of the line of knowledge from the line of being. What a development of knowledge gives without a corresponding change of being and a change of being without an increase in knowledge. What "understanding" means. Understanding as the resultant of knowledge and being. The difference between understanding and knowledge. Understanding as the function of three centers. Why people try to find names for things they do not understand. Our language. Why people do not understand one another. The word "man" and its different meanings. The language accepted in the system. Seven gradations of the concept "man." The first three, that we're born with and all three is on the same level. #4 has a center of garavity, #5 has unity with self-consciouness, #6 has objective consciounes, and #7 has a permanent I. (Understanding this concept we can understand humanity better.) The principle of relativity in the system. Gradations parallel to the gradations of man. The word "world". Variety of its meanings. Examination of the word "world" from the point of view of the principle of relativity. Tha fundemental law of the universe. The law of three principles or three forces. Necessity of three forces for the appearance of a phenomenon. The third force. Why we do not see the third force. Three forces in ancient teachings. The creation of worlds by the will of the Absolute. A chain of worlds or the "ray of creation". The number of laws in each world.

pages 64-81 31 points no diagrams

Notes:
Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) The birth-year of Thomas Aquinas is commonly given as 1227, but he was probably born early in 1225 at his father's castle of Roccasecea (75 m. e.s.e. of Rome) in Neapolitan territory. He died at the monastery of Fossanova, one mile from Sonnino (64 m. s.e. of Rome), Mar. 7, 1274. His father was Count Landulf of an old high-born south Italian family, and his mother was Countess Theodora of Theate, of noble Norman descent. In his fifth year he was sent for his early education to the monastery of Monte Cassino, where his father's brother Sinibald was abbot. Later he studied in Naples. Probably in 1243 he determined to enter the Dominican order; but on the way to Rome he was seized by his brothers and brought back to his parents at the castle of S. Giovanni, where he was held a captive for a year or two and besieged with prayers, threats, and even sensual temptation to make him relinquish his purpose. Finally the family yielded and the order sent Thomas to Cologne to study under Albertus Magnus, where he arrived probably toward the end of 1244. He accompanied Albertus to Paris in 1245, remained there with his teacher, continuing his studies for three years, and followed Albertus at the latter's return to Cologne in 1248. For several years longer he remained with the famous philosopher of scholasticism, presumably teaching. This long association of Thomas with the great polyhistor was the most important influence in his development; it made him a comprehensive scholar and won him permanently for the Aristotelian method. In 1252 probably Thomas went to Paris for the master's degree, which he found some difficulty in attaining owing to attacks, at that time on the mendicant orders. Ultimately, however, he received the degree and entered ceremoniously Upon his office of teaching in 1257; he taught in Paris for several years and there wrote certain of his works and began others. In 1259 he was present at an important chapter of his order at Valenciennes, At the solicitation of Pope Urban IV. (therefore not before the latter part of 1261), he took up his residence in Rome. In 1269-71 he was again active in Paris. In 1272 the provincial chapter at Florence empowered him to found a new studium generale at such place as he should choose, and he selected Naples. Early in 1274 the pope directed Mm to attend the Council of Lyons and he undertook the journey, although he was far from well. On the way he stopped at the castle of a niece and there became seriously ill. He wished to end his days in a monastery and not being able to reach a house of the, Dominicans he was carried to the Cistercian Fossanova. There, first, after his death, his remains were preserved.
< karlfried graf durckheim by Alex Burns (alex@disinfo.com) - December 16, 2000

Glossary:

Absolute:The highest Reality; supreme Consciousness; the pure, untainted, changeless Truth, is from the Latin absolutum, meaning "freed," "unloosed," and is, therefore, an exact English parallel of the Sanskrit philosophical term moksha or mukti, and more mystically of the Sanskrit term so commonly found in Buddhist writings especially, nirvana -- an extremely profound and mystical thought. (perfect or complete or pure). Kant refers to absolute reality and knowledge, in contrast with empirical reality and empirical knowledge. To say that space and time are transcendentally ideal is to deny that they have absolute reality. To have absolute knowledge would be to know something about a thing in itself, not an appearance or object of sensible intuition.
Being:A being, in the most general sense, is anything that is alive. Being with a capital 'B', on the other hand, is often used in philosophy to refer to divine Being, God, or ultimate reality.
Knowledge:cognition: the psychological result of perception and learning and reasoning. Also knowledge can be considered as the distillation of information that has been collected, classified, organized, integrated, abstracted and value added. Knowledge is at a level of abstraction higher than the data, and information on which it is based and can be used to deduce new information and new knowledge. When considering knowledge it is usually in the context of human expertise used in solving problems.
Understanding:synthesizing knowledge to arrive at the underlying reason for a pattern. Example: Mark's mother, after a parent-teacher conference, realizes that Mark's math performance improvements are timed with his grandfather's monthly visits when he tutors Mark in math. By linking her knowledge of the visits with Mark's testing pattern, Mark's mother has gained an understanding for Mark's monthly math improvement spurts. Composed of affinity, reality and communication. These three things are necessary to the understanding of anything. One has to have some affinity for it, it has to be real to him to some degree and he needs some communication with it before he can understand it. Greater understanding comes about by increasing any one of these three factors. 2) Knowingness in action. The ability to know about and interact with something. Also understanding is based on comprehension and discernment and empathy; "an understanding friend."
Language:language is a system of finite arbitrary symbols combined according to rules of grammar for the purpose of communication. Individual languages use sounds, gestures and other symbols to represent objects, concepts, emotions, ideas, and thoughts.
Man:an adult person
Naming things:I believe in the power and mystery of naming things. Language has the capacity to transform our cells, rearrange our learned patterns of behavior and redirect our thinking. I believe in naming what's right in front of us because that is often what is most invisible.
Relativity:the doctrine that measurements and perceptions are true only in relation to a given observer at a given place and time. Refers to the belief that there is no way to determine objective truth or objective morality; subjectivity is emphasized and the truth becomes what is meaningful or significant within a given cntext, while good means pleasurable or satisfying; person's own thoughts and feelings are final guide to action (Roy, 2000). The theory of special relativity: (or special relativity for short) was established in 1905 by the famous physicist Albert Einstein at the age of 26. Special relativity is of importance in the realm of high relative velocities. It has been thoroughly verified on numerous occasions and has always stood up to the critical tests. Special relativity is now a tool at work, almost daily, in the scientists' calculations and laboratories.
Third Force:The unifying force in Christianity is the Holly Gost. In Gurdjieffian sense the WORK itself is the third force.
Universe:
world:

Additional Notes: Once more: I'm absolutely certain that I understand very little what Ouspensky is saying. But I speak anyway, because that is what I need to do. That is the paradox. We are all holy beings on a holy mission.
This should be moved
Anthroposophy is a path of knowledge, to guide the spiritual in the human being to the spiritual in the universe... Anthroposophists are those who experience, as an essential need of life, certain questions on the nature of the human being and the universe, just as one experiences hunger and thirst.