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Chapter#06

Talk about aims, Personal aims, To be a master of Oneself.
Final Version#2



The main ideas are:(1)What is your aim? The aim of the "Search," is, however different. Ultimately the aim is to awaken you from a hypnotic sleep and or once awakened try to keep you awake. One way to do this according to Gurdjieff is through "intentional effort." (2)What does that mean to "Know Thyslef"?It's possible to know the machine, but man is always more then what he thinks he is. So he or she is not just a machine. Accorging to Gurdjieff "In order to know yourself, you have to do self observation." Read from middle of page 105 to middle of page 109, (3)Imagination, (4)The possibility of self change (transformation). What is the limit of reinventig ourselves. It is difficult because it requires to remove ourselves from the institution that houses us (fro our body). So it is like rebuilding the ship while we are out at see. Some parts of us must die!

Richard Liebow said;"You cannot have an aim unless you name it, so name your aim!" Very early in my meetings with Richard he used to emphasize the importance of diction and his aversion to "wasting of time." When we complaind he used to say "Try HARDER!"

Objective:Name your aim! i.e. develope your Mission Statement. For the next meeting have at least 3 aims and from that you'll pick one amd make it your God. From Gurdjieff:What must I do? There are two kinds of doing:automatic-doing and doing-according-to-aim. Take a small thing which you are now not able to do, and make this your aim, your God. Let nothing interfere. Only aim at this. Then, if you succeed in doing this, you will be able to give yourself a greater task. Now you have an appetite to do things too big for you. This is an abnormal appetite. You can never do these things, and this appetite keeps you from doing the small things you might do. Destroy this appetite, forget big things. Make the breaking of small habits your aim. (Notes from Students)

Outline Points
  1. Talk about aims.
  2. Can the teaching pursue a definite aim?
  3. The aim of existence.You need not impose any meaning on life. The problem is that, instead of living, we are obsessed with the question of how we can live. Society has created in us the need to do something to live better and nobler.
  4. Personal aims.
  5. To know the future.
  6. To exist after death.
  7. To be a master of oneself.

  8. To be a Christian.
  9. To help humanity.
  10. To stop wars.
  11. G's explanations.
  12. Fate, accident and will.
  13. "Mad machines".
  14. Esoteric Christianity.

  15. What ought man's aim to be?
  16. The causes of inner slavery.
  17. With what the way of liberation begins.
  18. "Know thyself"
  19. Different understandings of this idea.
  20. Self sudy.
  21. How to study?

  22. Self-observation.
  23. Recording and analysis.
  24. A fundamental principle of the working of the human machine.
  25. The four centers:Thinking, emotional, moving, instinctive.
  26. Distinguishing between the work of the centers.
  27. Making changes in the working of the machine.
  28. Upsetting the balance.

  29. How does the machine restore its balance?
  30. Incidental changes.
  31. Wrong work of centers.
  32. Imagination.
  33. Daydreaming.
  34. Habits.
  35. Opposing habits for the purpose of self-observation.

  36. The struggle against expressing negative emotions.
  37. Registering mechanicalness.
  38. Changes resulting from right self observation.
  39. The idea of moving center.
  40. The usual classification of man's actions.
  41. Classification based upon the division of centers.
  42. Automatism.

  43. Instinctive actions.
  44. The difference between the instinctive and moving functions.
  45. Division of the emotions.
  46. Different levels of the centers.

 

Questions for this chapter (Developed by Richard Liebow)
  1. Does this teaching have any particular aim?
  2. Why do you come to these meetings?
  3. What ought to be your aim ?
  4. How does one study oneself?
  5. Is daydreaming ever productive?
  6. Are mechanical habits ever productive?
  7. Is the expression of negative emotions ever productive?
  8. Are you making good use of your skills-learning capabilities?
  9. Are you able to improve the quantity, quality or scope of your instinctive functions?
  10. How reliable is your ability to feel and express emotions like faith and love?
  11. Is your imagination your friend or your enemy?
  12. Are you getting some practical understanding of the term "self-observation"...?
  13. Do you sometimes refer to a thought as a feeling or a feeling as a thought?
  14. Do you accept the suggestion that habit change involves some sort of displacement, that one habit is always replaced by some other form of behavior?
  15. Do you wish to know the precise day and hour of your impending death?
  16. How strong is your control over your habits and your behavior?
  17. How strong is your wish to help humanity?
  18. How strong is your wish to stop wars?
  19. Do you accept the suggestion that such as you are you may just be a mad machine?
  20. Do you think of yourself as a responsible human being?
  21. Do you sometimes see yourself as a slave to other people's whims and fantasies?
  22. How strong is your wish to be master of yourself?
  23. Can a machine be master of itself?
  24. Do you believe that war is really the result of planetary influences?

Notes:
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling(1775 – 1854), was a German philosopher. Standard histories of philosophy make him the midpoint in the development of German Idealism, situating him between Fichte, his mentor prior to 1800, and Hegel, his former school roommate and erstwhile friend. Interpreting Schelling's philosophy is often difficult because of its ever-changing nature. Some scholars characterize him as a protean thinker who, although brilliant, jumped from one subject to another and lacked the synthesizing power needed to arrive at a complete philosophical system. Others challenge the notion that Schelling's thought is marked by profound breaks, instead arguing that his philosophy always focused on a few common themes, especially human freedom, the absolute, and the relationship between man and nature. Schelling's thought has often been neglected, especially in the English-speaking world. This stems not only from the ascendancy of Hegel, whose mature works portray Schelling as a mere footnote in the development of Idealism, but also from his Naturphilosophie, which positivist scientists have often ridiculed for its "silly" analogizing and lack of empirical orientation. In recent years, Schelling scholars have forcefully attacked both of these sources of neglect.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo:(1803-1882) A founder of the Transcendental movement and the founder of a distinctly American philosophy emphasizing optimism, individuality, and mysticism Emerson was one of the most influential literary figures of the nineteenth century. Raised to be a minister in Puritan New England, Emerson sought to "create all things new" with a philosophy stressing the recognition of God Immanent, the presence of ongoing creation and revelation by a god apparent in all things and who exists within everyone. Also crucial to Emerson's thought is the related Eastern concept of the essential unity of all thoughts, persons, and things in the divine whole. Traditional values of right and wrong, good and evil, appear in his work as necessary opposites, evidencing the effect of German philosopher G. W. F. Hegel's system of dialectical metaphysics. Emerson's works also emphasize individualism and each person's quest to break free from the trappings of the illusory world (maya) in order to discover the godliness of the inner Self.
William James (1842–1910)This will probbably also moved. was a pioneering American psychologist and philosopher. He wrote influential books on the young science of psychology, educational psychology, psychology of religious experience and mysticism, and the philosophy of pragmatism. William James was born in New York City, son of Henry James, Sr., an independently wealthy and notoriously eccentric Swedenborgian theologian well acquainted with the literary and intellectual elites of his day. The intellectual brilliance of the James family milieu and the remarkable epistolary talents of several of its members have made them a subject of continuing interest to historians, biographers, and critics. James interacted with a wide array of writers and scholars throughout his life, including his godfather Ralph Waldo Emerson, Horace Greeley, William Cullen Bryant, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Charles Sanders Peirce, Josiah Royce, George Santayana, Ernst Mach, John Dewey, Helen Keller, Mark Twain, James Frazer, Henri Bergson, H. G. Wells, G. K. Chesterton, Sigmund Freud, Gertrude Stein, and Carl Jung.
Friedrich Ludwig Gottlob Frege (1848-1925) was a German mathematician, logician, and philosopher who worked at the University of Jena. Frege essentially reconceived the discipline of logic by constructing a formal system which, in effect, constituted the first ‘predicate calculus’. In this formal system, Frege developed an analysis of quantified statements and formalized the notion of a ‘proof’ in terms that are still accepted today. Frege then demonstrated that one could use his system to resolve theoretical mathematical statements in terms of simpler logical and mathematical notions. One of the axioms that Frege later added to his system, in the attempt to derive significant parts of mathematics from logic, proved to be inconsistent. Nevertheless, his definitions (of the predecessor relation and of the concept of natural number) and methods (for deriving the axioms of number theory) constituted a significant advance. To ground his views about the relationship of logic and mathematics, Frege conceived a comprehensive philosophy of language that many philosophers still find insightful. However, his lifelong project, of showing that mathematics was reducible to logic, was not successful.

Glossary:
sat guru= internal guru or sometimes referred to as "internal master."
Christian=A person who has received Christian baptism or is a believer in Jesus Christ and his teachings.
Esoteric Christianity= The Web definitions is the term refering to an ensemble of spiritual currents which regard Christianity as a mystery (here probably means sacred) religion, and profess the existence and possession of certain esoteric doctrines or practices, hidden from the public but accessible only to a narrow circle of "enlightened", ...
Imagination/Daydreaming=indulge in a fantasy, reverie:absentminded dreaming while awake.

Additional Notes:
A well-read friend, Vince Lepidi, told me that Benoit was a student of G.I. Gurdjieff, which I had never heard. His source was James Moore's "Gurdjieff: A Biography, The Anatomy of a Myth." Moore mentions Benoit along with René Daumal and Luc Dietrich as Gurdjieff pupils. Walter Driscoll, editor of the Gurdjieff International Review (see Sources & Links page), confirmed in correspondence that Benoit was a student of Gurdjieff's.
Some things must end and that is not neccessarly a failiure. I feel intelectually numb. I can't even put together a cohirent sentence. I simply copy others and I just kind of assemble it. This is one of the great books of all time. The author was a psychiatrist who was bed ridden and took the opportunity to investigate the human mind and body. He used scientific observation as his tool. As many eastern Zen masters have said. Just watch as a good shepherd watches his flock. The sheep will be contented and well cared for. He will know each one by their sound. These are not different techniques. Benoit created with this book a western scientific basis of Zen. Carlotte Joko Beck and her students have created a new Zen called "Ordinary Mind Zen" from a synthesis of Benoit's work and Japanese formal Zen practice. This is a very difficult book to read. The book was translated from the French. Long paragraphs are one sentence. The book is also written in a dry academic style. The translator was must not have been able to understand what Hubert Benoit wrote, except in a literal sense. I was only able to read it by reading a couple of pages at a time each morning as I took a tub bath. I have read it several times that way. It does get easier the third or fourth time. Unfortunately, formal mediation practice over years would be necessary for a practical usage of this material. The book does have great academic value for people who are interested in the real thing. This book is not an easy read, not so much due to its translation as to its depth and subtly. Like the mark of great Teachers words remembered in hindsight; with each re-reading of this book deeper and deeper lessons can be learned. Though this is not for the novice, nor would I call Beniot a Zen master as such, this book sits side by side on my shelf of important works along with Philip Kapleau's Three Pillers, and Shunryu Suzuki's Beginners Mind.
This will probbably moved.