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Chapter#9
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Notes:Latcho Drom,
ALFRED RICHARD ORAGE: emerged from British 19th Century working class poverty to survey the significant literary, psychological, political, and spiritual trends of the early 20th century. Equipped with the barest formal education, a formidable natural intelligence and an unquenchable yearning to understand, His literary skills and wide range of interests led him to edit the enormously influential journal The New Age from 1907 until 1922 when he moved from London to Fontainebleau to join Gurdjieff. In January 1924, Orage went to New York to help Gurdjieff with his first visit to America and later introduced and supervised the Work there. In May 1930, he returned to England and became deeply involved with political issues and was instrumental in rekindling interest in the socialist movement called ‘Social Credit’ which became a fringe force in politics for many decades. He founded a new journal The New English Weekly in April 1932. He was planning to introduce Gurdjieff’s ideas in that paper and elsewhere when he died on the night of November 5, 1934.
Carl Emil Weber: (1864 – 1920) was a German political economist and sociologist who is considered one of the founders of the modern study of sociology and public administration. He began his career at the University of Berlin, and later worked at Freiburg University, University of Heidelberg, University of Vienna and University of Munich. He was influential in contemporary German politics, being an advisor to Germany's negotiators at the Treaty of Versailles and to the commission charged with drafting the Weimar Constitution. His major works deal with rationalisation in sociology of religion and government, but he also contributed much in the field of economics. His most famous work is his essay The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, which began his work in the sociology of religion. In this work, Weber argued that religion was one of the non-exclusive reasons for the different ways the cultures of the Occident and the Orient have developed, and stressed importance of particular characteristics of ascetic Protestantism which led to the development of capitalism, bureaucracy and the rational-legal state in the West. In another major work, Politics as a Vocation, Weber defined the state as an entity which claims a monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force, a definition that became pivotal to the study of modern Western political science. His most known contributions are often referred to as the 'Weber Thesis'.
John Locke (1632-1704) was an Oxford scholar, medical researcher and physician, political operative, economist and idealogue for a revolutionary movement, as well as being one of the great philosophers of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century. His monumental Essay Concerning Human Understanding aims to determine the limits of human understanding. Earlier writers such as Chillingworth had argued that human understanding was limited, Locke tries to determine what those limits are. We can, he thinks, know with certainty that God exists. We can also know about morality with the same precision we know about mathematics, because we are the creators of moral and political ideas. In regard to natural substances we can know only the appearances and not the underlying realities which produce those appearances. Still, the atomic hypothesis with its attendant distinction between primary and secondary qualities is the most plausible available hypothesis. Locke's Two Treatises of Civil Government were published after the Glorious Revolution of 1688 brought William of Orange and Mary to the throne, but they were written in the throes of the Whig revolutionary plots against Charles II in the early 1680s. In this work Locke gives us a theory of natural law and natural rights which he uses to distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate civil governments, and to argue for the legitimacy of revolt against tyrannical governments. Locke wrote on a variety of other topics Among the most important of these is toleration. Henry VIII had created a Church of England when he broke with Rome. This Church was the official religion of England. Catholics and dissenting Protestants, e.g Quakers, Unitarians and so forth, were subject to legal prosecution. During much of the Restoration period there was debate, negotiation and manuevering to include dissenting Protestants within the Church of England. In a "Letter Concerning Toleration" and several defenses of that letter Locke argues for a separation between church and state.
"Though the familiar use of the Things about us, takes off our Wonder; yet it cures not our Ignorance." ---An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (III. vi. 9) "...he that will not give just occasion to think that all government in the world is the product only of force and violence, and that men live together by no other rules but that of beasts, where the strongest carries it...must of necessity find another rise of government, another original of political power..." ---from The Second Treatise of Civil Government
SŘren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) In the summers of 1834 and 1835 Kierkegaard was in a state of violent mental unrest and ferment. For a time he was obliged to break off his studies entirely and retire to Gilleleje, a coastal resort. There he attempted to clarify his thoughts and among other things wrote in his notes: "What I really need is to come to terms with myself about what I am to do, not about what I am to know, except insomuch as knowledge must precede every act. It is a matter of understanding my destiny, of seeing what the Divinity actually wants me to do; what counts is to find a truth, which is true for me, to find that idea for which I will live and die." When a memorial stone was erected on Gilbjerg Head at Gilleleje in 1935 to commemorate the centenary of the intellectual emergence of the young Kierkegaard, these words from his notebook were inscribed on the stone: "What is truth but to live for an idea."
Daisetz Teitaro D. T. Suzuki (1870-1966) Kanazawa, Japan. He was a famous author of books and essays on Buddhism and Zen that were instrumental in spreading interest in Zen to the West.
Glossary:
Sacrafice: from two Latin words: sacer which means holy or sacred, and facere which means to make. Thus, to sacrifice is to make holy, which, from a seeker's point of view, means to recognize as God's what is God's. As we see it, then, a seeker's function is to sacrifice his or her life (including everyone and everything "in" it); that is, recognize it as God's, and give it to God. This supreme sacrifice is an ongoing process only because we are unable (unwilling) to do it all at once, choosing instead to hold back a little of this and some of that. Finally (happily), we realize that, (1) God being all there is, it is impossible to lose anything, (2) the more we give to God, the more we have ourselves, and (3) when we truly release our lives to God (whose they always are and were anyway), we are free to enjoy them. From the separative ego's point of view ("I am me and you aren't"), the process of sacrifice always incurs loss (even if for a "good cause"), because, as the separative ego perceives it, "what is mine is mine, and what I give to God is no longer mine".
buffers:Our innabitions
Additional Notes: This will be moved probably to Chapter #15 It destroyed even my identity. You see, the identity is nothing but the input of the culture there [in U.G.]. What is Conscience:Conscience (Con"science) (?), n. [F. conscience, fr. L. conscientia, fr. consciens, p.pr. of conscire to know, to be conscious; con- + scire to know. See Science.] 1. Knowledge of one's own thoughts or actions; consciousness. [Obs.] "The sweetest cordial we receive, at last, Is conscience of our virtuous actions past." Denham. 2. The faculty, power, or inward principle which decides as to the character of one's own actions, purposes, and affections, warning against and condemning that which is wrong, and approving and prompting to that which is right; the moral faculty passing judgment on one's self; the moral sense. "My conscience hath a thousand several tongues, And every tongue brings in a several tale, And every tale condemns me for a villain." Shak. "As science means knowledge, conscience etymologically means self-knowledge . . . But the English word implies a moral standard of action in the mind as well as a consciousness of our own actions. . . . Conscience is the reason, employed about questions of right and wrong, and accompanied with the sentiments of approbation and condemnation." Whewell. 3. The estimate or determination of conscience; conviction or right or duty. "Conscience supposes the existence of some such [i.e., moral] faculty, and properly signifies our consciousness of having acted agreeably or contrary to its directions." Adam Smith. 4. Tenderness of feeling; pity. [Obs.] Chaucer. The supremacy of conscience is a great theme of discourse. "Were its might equal to its right", says Butler, "it would rule the world". With Kant we could say that conscience is autonomously supreme, if against Kant we added that thereby we meant only that every duty must be brought home to the individual by his own individual conscience, and is to this extent imposed by it; so that even he who follows authority contrary to his own private judgment should do so on his own private conviction that the former has the better claim. If the Church stands between God and conscience, then in another sense also the conscience is between God and the Church. Unless a man is conscientiously submissive to the Catholic Church his subjection is not really a matter of inner morality but is mechanical obedience.
Valószínuleg Pascal volt az, akinél egy ilyen elgondolás elso nyomai fellelhetoek: ismeretes az az elképzelése, amelyben párhuzamot von az emberiség és egy olyan „ember között, aki nem hal meg, miközben évszázadokon keresztül folyamatosan tanul”. A modern Nyugatot olyannyira jellemzo antispirituális szellemrol tesz tanúbizonyságot akkor is, amikor kijelenti, hogy „azok, akiket antik embereknek hívunk, valójában minden értelemben újak voltak”, vagyis véleményük nem sokat nyom a latba. E tekintetben Pascalnak legalább egy elofutára volt, mivel Bacon ugyanilyen értelemben írta, „antiquitas saeculi, juventus mundi”.
The question of becoming conscious and remaining in that state is one that lies in the minds of many individuals. The struggle finding the path to consciousness can be rewarding and will enhance the lives of all who seek awareness. (I hope so).
Questions: Is consciousness connected to the level of man's being? i.e. #5 have a different consciousness than #4?