Yesterday I was reading a post here by Joshua, and he mentioned the work by Ouspensky titled, In Search of the Miraculous. I've owned this book for several years, but have yet to read it.
This morning as I prepared for work, I grabbed the book from the bookshelf and placed it on the kitchen counter so I would remember to read. I picked the book up again, and flipped through the pages. I landed on Chapter 4. I decided to give it a quick read, then off to work.
It must be the law of attraction for such a fine omen to land in my hands. Listed below are some concepts that I've been working with for quite some time now. This time, in these words listed below, the concepts he relates seemed to have really sunk in, as well as bypassed my 'reason.' These words are felt by me, now. Felt so much that I decided to type manually all that is listed below.
I'll admit it's a bit long, but well worth the time. (Unless you really can't stand Gurdjieff or Ouspensky.)
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In almost every one of his lectures G. reverted to a theme which he evidently considered to be of the utmost importance but which was very difficult for many of us to assimilate.
"There are," he said, "two lines along which man's development proceeds, the line of
knowledge and the line of
being. In right evolution the line of knowledge and the line of being develop simultaneously, parallel to, and helping one another. But if the line of knowledge gets too far ahead of the line of being, or if the line of being gets ahead of the line of knowledge, man's development goes wrong, and sooner or later it must come to a standstill.
"People understand what 'knowledge' means. And they understand the possibility of different levels of knowledge. They understand that knowledge may be lesser or greater, that is to say, of one quality or of another quality. But they do not understand this in relation to 'being.' 'Being,' for them, means simply 'existence' to which is opposed just 'non-existence.' They do not understand that being or existence may be of very different levels and categories. Take for instance the being of a mineral and of a plant. It is a different being. The being of a plant and of an animal is again a different being. The being of an animal and of a man is a different being. But the being of two people can differ from one another more than the being of a mineral and of an animal. This is exactly what people do not understand. And they do not understand that
knowledge depends on
being. Not only do they not understand this latter but they definitely do not wish to understand it. And especially in Western culture it is considered that a man may possess great knowledge, for example he may be an able scientist, make discoveries, advance science, and at the same time he may be, and has the right to be, a petty, egoistic, caviling, mean, envious, vain, naive, and absent-minded man. It seems to be considered here that a professor must always forget his umbrella everywhere.
“And yet it is his being. And people think that his knowledge does not depend on his being. People of Western culture put great value on the level of a man’s knowledge but they do not value the level of a man’s being and are not ashamed of the low level of their own being. They do not even understand what it means. And they do not understand that a man’s knowledge depends on the level of his being.
“If knowledge gets far ahead of being, it becomes theoretical and abstract and inapplicable to life, or actually harmful, because instead of serving life and helping people the better to struggle with the difficulties they meet, it begins to complicate man’s life, brings new difficulties into it, new troubles and calamities which were not there before.
“The reason for this is that knowledge which is not in accordance with being cannot be large enough for, or sufficiently suited to, man’s real needs. It will always be knowledge of
one thing together with ignorance of
another thing; knowledge of the
detail without knowledge of the
whole; knowledge of the
form without a knowledge of the
essence.
“Such preponderance of knowledge over being is observed in present-day culture. The idea of the value and importance of the level of being is completely forgotten. And it is forgotten that the level of knowledge is determined by the level of being. Actually at a given level of being the possibilities of knowledge are limited and finite. Within the limits of a given being the
quality of knowledge cannot be changed, and the accumulation of information of one and the same nature, within already known limits, alone is possible. A change in the nature of knowledge is possible only with a change in the nature of being.
“Taken in itself, a man’s being has many different sides. The most characteristic feature of a modern man is the
absence of unity in him and, further, the absence in him of even traces of those properties which he most likes to ascribe to himself, that is, ‘lucid consciousness,’ ‘free will,’ a ‘permanent ego or I,’ and the ‘ability to do.’ It may surprise you if I say that the chief feature of a modern man’s being which explains
everything else that is lacking in him is sleep.
“A modern man lives in sleep, in sleep he is born and in sleep he dies. About sleep, its significance and its role in life, we will speak later. But at present just think of one thing, what
knowledge can a sleeping man have? And if you think about it and at the same time remember that sleep is the chief feature of our being, it will at once become clear to you that if a man really wants knowledge, he must first of all think about how to wake, that is, about how to change his being.
“Exteriorly man’s being has many different sides: activity or passivity; truthfulness or a tendency to lie; sincerity or insincerity; courage, cowardice; self-control, profligacy; irritability, egoism, readiness for self-sacrifice, pride, vanity, conceit, industry, laziness, morality, depravity; all these and much more besides make up the being of man.
“But all this is entirely
mechanical in man. If he lies it means that he cannot help lying. If he tells the truth it means that he cannot help telling the truth, and so it is with everything. Everything happens, a man can do nothing either in himself or outside himself.
“But of course there are limits and bounds. Generally speaking, the being of a modern man is of very inferior quality. But it can be such bad quality that no change is possible. This must always be remembered. People whose being can still be changed are very lucky. But there are people who are definitely diseased, broken machines with whom nothing can be done. And such people are in the majority. If you think of this you will understand why only few can receive real knowledge. Their being prevents it.
“Generally speaking, the
balance between knowledge and being is even more important than a separate development of either one or the other. And a separate development of knowledge or of being is not desirable in any way. Although it is precisely this
one-sided development that often seems particularly attractive to people.
“If knowledge outweighs being a man
knows but has no power to do. It is useless knowledge. On the other hand if being outweighs knowledge a man
has the power to do, but does not know, that is, he can do something but does not know what to do. The being he has acquired becomes aimless and efforts made to attain it prove to be useless.
“In the history of humanity there are known many examples when entire civilizations have perished because knowledge outweighed being or being outweighed knowledge.”
“What are the results of the development of the line of knowledge without being, or the development of the line of being without knowledge?” someone asked during a talk upon this subject.
“The development of the line of knowledge without the line of being gives a
weak yogi,” said G., “that is to say, a man who knows a great deal but can do nothing, a man who
does not understand” (he emphasized these words) “what he knows, a man without
appreciation, that is, a man for whom there is no difference between one kind of knowledge and another. And the development of the line of being without knowledge gives a
stupid saint, that is, a man who can do a great deal but who does not know what to do or with what object; and if he does anything he acts in obedience to his subjective feelings which may lead him greatly astray and cause him to commit grave mistakes, that is, actually to do the opposite of what he wants. In either case both the
weak yogi and the
stupid saint are brought to a standstill. Neither the one nor the other can develop further.
“In order to understand this and, in general, the nature of knowledge and the nature of being, as well as their interrelation, it is necessary to understand the relation of knowledge and being to ‘understanding.’
“
Knowledge is one thing, understanding is another thing.
“People often confuse these concepts and do not clearly grasp what is the difference between them.
“Knowledge by itself does not give understanding. Nor is understanding increased by an increase of knowledge alone. Understanding depends upon the relation of knowledge to being. Understanding is the resultant of knowledge and being. And knowledge and being must not diverge too far, otherwise understanding will prove to be far removed from either. At the same time the relation of knowledge to being does not change with a mere growth of knowledge. It changes only when being grows simultaneously with knowledge. In other words, understanding grows only with the growth of being.
“In ordinary thinking, people do not distinguish understanding from knowledge. They think that great understanding depends on greater knowledge. Therefore they accumulate knowledge, or that which they call knowledge, but they do not know how to accumulate understanding and do not bother about it.
“And yet a person accustomed to self-observation knows for certain that at different periods of his life he has understood one and the same idea, one and the same thought, in totally different ways. It often seems strange to him that he could have understood so wrongly that which, in his opinion, he now understands rightly. And he realizes, as the same time, that his knowledge has not changed, and that he knew as much about the given subject before as he knows now. What, then, has changed? His being has changed. And once being has changed understanding must change also.
“The difference between knowledge and understanding becomes clear when we realize that
knowledge may be the function of the one center. Understanding, however, is the function of three centers. Thus the thinking apparatus may know something. But
understanding appears only when a man feels and senses what is connected with it.
“We have spoken earlier about mechanicalness. A man cannot say that he understands the idea of mechanicalness if he only
knows about it with his mind. He must feel it with his whole mass, with his whole being; then he will understand it.
“In the sphere of practical activity people know very well the difference between mere knowledge and understanding. They realize that to know and
to know how to do are two different things, and that
knowing how to do is not created by knowledge alone. But outside the sphere of practical activity people do not clearly understand what ‘understanding’ means.
“As a rule, when people realize that they do not understand a thing they try to
find a name for what they do not ‘understand,’ and when they find a name they say they ‘understand.’ Unfortunately, people are usually satisfied with names. A man who knows a great many names, that is, a great many words, is deemed to understand a great deal-again excepting, of course, any sphere of practical activity wherein his ignorance very soon becomes evident.
“One of the reasons for the divergence between the line of knowledge and the line of being in life, and the lack of understanding which is partly the cause and partly the effect of this divergence, is to be found in the language which people speak. This language is full of wrong concepts, wrong classifications, wrong associations. And the chief thing is that, owing to the essential characteristics of ordinary thinking, that is to say, to its vagueness and inaccuracy, every word can have thousands of different meanings according to the material the speaker has at his disposal and the complex of associations at work in him at the moment. People do not clearly realize to what a degree their language is subjective, that is, what different things each of them says while using the same words. They are not aware that each one of them speaks in a language of his own, understanding other people’s language either vaguely or not at all, and having no idea that each one of them speaks in a language unknown to him. People have a very firm conviction, or belief, that they speak the same language, that they understand one another.
Actually this conviction has no foundation whatever. The language in which they speak is adapted to practical life only. People can communicate to one another information of a practical character, but as soon as they pass to a slightly more complex sphere they are immediately lost, and they cease to understand one another, although they are unconscious of it. People imagine that they often, if not always, understand one another, or that they can, at any rate, understand one another if they try or want to; they imagine that they understand the authors of the books they read and that other people understand them. This also is one of the illusions which people create for themselves and in the midst of which they live. As a matter of fact, no one understands anyone else. Two men can say the same thing with profound conviction but call it by different names, or argue endlessly together without suspecting that they are thinking exactly the same. Or, vice versa, two men can say the same words and imagine that they agree with, and understand, one another, whereas they are actually saying absolutely different things and do not understand one another in the least.
“If we take the simplest words that occur constantly in speech and endeavor to analyze the meaning given to them, we shall see at once that, at every moment of his life, every man puts into each word a special meaning which another man can never put into it or suspect.”
In Search of the Miraculous
P.D. Ouspensky
Chapter 4 - partial
Thank you for your time
Zam I Am the GurdjieffCastanedianite
