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Chapter#15

Religion a relative concept. Schools of the fourth way. Only self-initiation is possible. Final Draft#2

Outline Points

Religion a relative concept. Religions correspond to the level of a man's being. "Can prayer help?" Learning to pray. General ignorance regarding Christianity. The Christian Church a school. Egyptian "schools of repetition". Significance of rites. The "techniques" of religion. Where does the word "I" sound in one? The two parts of real religion and what each teaches. Kant and the idea of scale. Organic life on earth. Growth of the ray of creation. The moon. The evolving part of organic life is humanity. Humanity at a standstill. Change possible only at "crossroads". The process of evolution always begins with the formation of a conscious nucleus. Is there a conscious force fighting against evolution? Is mankind evolving? "Two hundred conscious people could change the whole of life on earth." Three "inner circles of humanity." The "outer circle." The four "ways" as four gates to the "exoteric circle." Schools of the fourth way. Pseudo exoteric systems and schools. "Truth in the form of a lie." Esoteric schools in the East. "Know thyself" is one of the fundamental tenets of esotericism but, as Alan Watts has bluntly put it, there is a taboo against knowing who you are, becausethe the aim of society is to keep everyone imprisoned,so make it your aim to refuse psychological imprisonment. The esoteric disciplines both in the East and in the West have been repositories of hidden knowledge designed to circumvent this taboo. Initiation and the Mysteries. Only self-initiation is possible.

Questions for this chapter were developed by Richard Liebow:

1. How does ones religion relate to the level of ones being?
2. How can one make ones prayers more meaningful and more effective?
3. How do our Monday meetings compare to an Egyptian School of Repetition? (Repetition has its own charm)
4. Where does the word I sound in you?
5. What are the two parts of real religion? (What to do and How to do it)
6. Are there conscious forces fighting against the development of your higher faculties?
7. Is your level of consciousness, awareness, sensitivity, and receptivity increasing or decreasing?
8. By what signs would you recognize an esoteric school if you were searching for one?
9. How much benefit would you expect to receive from a ceremonial initiation into the disciplines of some ancient life-transforming tradition?
10. Do you really believe it is ever possible to access truth through a lie?
    
    Notes: Maurice Nicoll ( 1884–1953) was a British psychiatrist and noted Fourth Way teacher. He is best known for his Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky, a multi-volume collection of talks he gave to his study groups. The most important thing , however is not in an the idea, but to do it!
    
    Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) "The universe is corporeal; all that is real is material, and what is not material is not real." --The Leviathan The philosophy of Thomas Hobbes is perhaps the most complete materialist philosophy of the 17th century. Hobbes rejects Cartesian dualism and believes in the mortality of the soul. He rejects free will in favor of determinism, a determinism which treats freedom as being able to do what one desires. He rejects Aristotelian and scholastic philosophy in favor of the "new" philosophy of Galileo and Gassendi, which largely treats the world as matter in motion. Hobbes is perhaps most famous for his political philosophy. Men in a state of nature, that is a state without civil government, are in a war of all against all in which life is hardly worth living. The way out of this desperate state is to make a social contract and establish the state to keep peace and order. Because of his view of how nasty life is without the state, Hobbes subscribes to a very authoritarian version of the social contract.
    Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)
    Kant's most original contribution to philosophy is the representation that makes the object possible rather than the object that makes the representation possible. This idea introduced the human mind as an active originator of experience rather than just a passive recipient of perception. Something like this now seems obvious: the mind could be a tabula rasa, a "blank tablet," no more than a bathtub full of silicon chips could be a digital computer. Perceptual input must be processed, i.e. recognized, or it would just be noise -- "less even than a dream" or "nothing to us," as Kant alternatively puts it. The keystone of Kant's philosophy, sometimes called critical philosophy, is contained in his Critique of Pure Reason (1781), in which he examined the bases of human knowledge and created an individual epistemology. Like earlier philosophers, Kant differentiated modes of thinking into analytic and synthetic propositions. An analytic proposition is one in which the predicate is contained in the subject, as in the statement “Black houses are houses. ” The truth of this type of proposition is evident, because to state the reverse would be to make the proposition self-contradictory. Such propositions are called analytic because truth is discovered by the analysis of the concept itself. Synthetic propositions, on the other hand, are those that cannot be arrived at by pure analysis, as in the statement “The house is black.” All the common propositions that result from experience of the world are synthetic.
    Arthur Schopenhauer: (1788-1860). Schopenhauer was, as a philosopher, a pessimist; he was a follower of Kant's Idealist school. Born in Danzig, Schopenhauer, because of a large inheritance from his father, was able to retire early, and, as a private scholar, was able to devote his life to the study of philosophy. By the age of thirty his major work, The World as Will and Idea, was published. The work, though sales were very disappointing, was, at least to Schopenhauer, a very important work. Bertrand Russell reports that Schopenhauer told people that certain of the paragraphs were written by the "Holy Ghost." Schopenhauer's system of philosophy, as previously mentioned, was based on that of Kant's. Schopenhauer did not believe that people had individual wills but were rather simply part of a vast and single will that pervades the universe: that the feeling of separateness that each of has is but an illusion. So far this sounds much like the Spinozistic view or the Naturalistic School of philosophy. The problem with Schopenhauer, and certainly unlike Spinoza, is that, in his view, "the cosmic will is wicked ... and the source of all endless suffering.
    Schopenhauer saw the worst in life and as a result he was dour and glum. Believing that he had no individual will, man was therefore at the complete mercy of all that which is about him. Now, whether his pessimism turned him into an ugly person, or whether its just a case of an ugly person adopting the philosophy of pessimism; -- I have no idea. But what I do know is that Schopenhauer had nobody he could call family. "His pessimism so affected his mother's social guests, who would disperse after his lengthy discourse on the uselessness of everything, that she finally forbade him her home. He parted from her, never to see her again." He never married, mainly because, I suppose, because any self-respecting woman would withdraw in horror, upon finding out Schopenhauer's view of women: they "are directly fitted for acting as the nurses and teachers of our early childhood by the fact that they are themselves childish, frivolous and short-sighted; in a word, they are big children all their life long." They are an "undersized, narrow-shouldered, broad-hipped and short legged race ... they have no proper knowledge of any; and they have no genius." As great a problem as Schopenhauer was to himself, he was a brilliant conversationalist; "his audience, consisting of a small circle of friends, would often listen to him until midnight. He never seemed to tire of talking, even during his last days." To Schopenhauer life was a painful process, relief for which, might to achieved through art or through denial. "The good man will practise complete chastity, voluntary poverty, fasting, and self-torture." (Russell.) It was Schopenhauer's view that through the contemplation of art, one "might lose contact with the turbulent stream of detailed existence around us"; and that permanent relief came through "the denial of the will to live, by the eradication of our desires, of our instincts, by the renunciation of all we consider worth while in practical life." Presumably any little bits of happiness we might snatch would only make us that more miserable, such real and full happiness was not possible, "a Utopian Ideal which we must not entertain even in our dreams." It is not difficult to understand that this "ascetic mysticism" of Schopenhauer's is one that appeals to the starving artist. Schopenhauer was "a lonely, violent and unbefriended man, who shared his bachelor's existence with a poodle. ... [He was of the view that the world was simply an idea in his head] a mere phantasmagoria of my brain, that therefore in itself is nothing.
    
    Glossary:
    Esoteric:es·o·ter·ic (s-trk)adj. Intended for or understood by only a particular group: an esoteric cult. See Synonyms at mysterious. Of or relating to that which is known by a restricted number of people.Confined to a small group: esoteric interests. Not publicly disclosed; confidential.
    Exoteric exoteric (ek-so-TER-ik) adjective
    1. Not limited to an inner circle of select people.
    2. Suitable for the general public.
    3. Relating to the outside; external
    [From Latin exotericus, from Greek exoterikos (external), from exotero, comparative form of exo (outside).] "In crude terms, some critics of Strauss argue that he interpreted the ancient philosophers as offering two different teachings, an esoteric one which is available only to those who read the ancient texts closely, and an exoteric one accessible to naive readers. The exoteric interpretations were aimed at the mass of people, the vulgar, while the esoteric teachings - the hidden meanings - were vouch-safed to the few, the philosophers." Ronald Bailey, Origin of the Specious: Why Do Neoconservatives Doubt Darwin?, Reason magazine (Los Angeles), Jul 1, 1997. "In their different ways and obviously to a varying degree these two publications should appeal to those who are alienated by exoteric Judaism stripped of its mystical elements. Ronald Isaacs begins by noting that there is no biblical Hebrew word for miracle." Jonathan Galante, Mysticism for the Masses, Jerusalem Post, Aug 27, 1999
    Religoin: There are many definitions for the term "religion" in common usage; so in order to include the greatest number of belief systems the following definition will be used: "Religion is any specific system of belief about a deity, often involving rituals, a code of ethics, and a philosophy of life." It includes monotheistic religions, Eastern religions; Neopagan religions, a wide range of other faith groups, spiritual paths, and ethical systems, and beliefs about the existence of God(s) and Goddess(es). Most people defining "religion", however, in a much more exclusive way.
    Important religions (from the Needleman class):
    

    Primitive Religions	The spiritual experience of nature
    Hinduism	The experience of the greater self
    Buddhism	Experience freedom from the ego
    Confucionism	The spiritual dimension of moral experience
    Taoism	The experinece of total receptivity
    Christianity	Love thy neighbor as yourself
    Judaism	The experence of responsibility to God & neighbor
    Islam	The experience of submission to God

    
    Excerpt from Views from the Real World by G. I. Gurdjieff: To build a living body inside man is the aim of all religions and all schools. Every religion has its own special way, but the aim is always the same. There are many ways toward achieving this aim. I have studied about two hundred religions; but if they are to be classified, I would say that there exist only four ways.As you already know, man has a number of specific centers. Let us take four of them: moving, thinking, feeling and the formatory apparatus. Imagine a man as a flat with four rooms. The first room is our physical body and corresponds to the cart in another illustration I have given. The second room is the emotional center, or the horse; the third room, the intellectual center, or the driver; and the fourth room, the master. Every religion understands that the master is not there and seeks him. But a master can be there only when the whole flat is furnished. Before receiving visitors, all the rooms should be furnished. Everyone does this in his own way. If a man is not rich, he furnishes every room separately, little by little. In order to furnish the fourth room,one must first furnish the other three. The four ways differ according to the order in which the three rooms are furnished. The first way begins with the furnishing of the first room, and so on...... If we act consciously, the interaction will be conscious. If I act unconsciously, everything will be the result of what I am sending out.....
    epistemology: is the theory of knowledge, where the central question is: Under what conditions does a subject know something to be the case? Epistemology is a branch of philosophy. To know is important, but to "be" is more important at least by Heidegger.