Class 6: Self-Remembering

Discussion

I've recently been re-reading some of the books by followers of Gurdjieff, looking for a few quotes that might help shed light on this process of self-remembering and looking to our source of being ... and I must admit the following:

• Everywhere in all the world's great religions and meditation traditions, there first appears a remarkable spiritual teacher who is in direct communion with the divine and who teaches from this deep inner knowingness - and then when this person dies, there emerge disciples and priests who almost always turn the heart-centered spiritual path into a head-fixated philosophical school.

Socrates was followed by Plato. Jesus was followed by Paul. Gurdjieff was followed by Ouspensky. Disciples tend to develop a grand multi-volume, many-hooped set of beliefs, rituals, books and methods that shift the focus of attention away from 'the kingdom of heaven is at hand' to 'sometime in the future you might get to heaven if you hop through all our priestly hoops.'

With Gurdjieff as well as the other meditative traditions I attempted to 'join' in my younger years, I always reached the point where I had to break away from the schools of the disciples, be they first-generation of fiftieth generation disciples. I would finally come up gasping for air in the present moment - and continue my search for direct spiritual experience on my own.

• This is why ultimately I decided that for my own spiritual path, I would take the priceless gems I found in all the meditative traditions, and throw away everything tradition-wise that got in the way of my direct encounter with the divine.

And I finally had to do the same thing with the remarkable ideas and gigantic spiritual concepts that have become attached to the Fourth Way of Gurdjidff and Ouspensky et al. I do not stand in judgment at all of individual teachers and the actual experintial content of their various meditation schools. But I do choose to put down all the books about all the convoluted concepts - and in this section of this course, as in all my writings, just write from the heart what spontaneously comes to mind.

All philosophy and dogma aside, what can we say about who we are from a meditative point of view? When we look to our source, beyond religious ideas and grand philosophical notions, what do we discover experientially?

Jesus said, "Know the truth, and the truth will set you free." What does it mean to know the truth, and how does this direct experience of reality set us free?

Without forethought I would like to express as best I can, the greater reality toward which this new meditation method is designed to aim our attention.

From the academic psychological perspective, we are nothing more nor less than biological organisms with fantastic bio-computer brains. We come into life pre-programmed with massive survival reflexes built into our genes. Certain aspects of our personalities are already hard-wired into our system. Other dimensions of our personalities (who we are) take shape based on the experiences we have, and how we learn to interpret those experiences through attitudes and beliefs we pick up from our elders as children.

• In current psychology there exists zero non-material spiritual dimension to us at all. We are very clever three-dimensional biological organisms - and our consciousness is generated by and limited to our personal bio-chemical system.

The meditative experience of who we are certainly accepts that we are at least what the psychologists tell us we are. But in all cultures and all meditative traditions, in meditation we discover an experience that lets us know that we are much more than the experimental method indicates.

In meditation, we experience the power and capacity and inclination of our consciousness to expand beyond our individual ego bubble, and merge with a greater consciousness. This greater consciousness is experienced as infinite, compassionate, vastly intelligent, and ultimately wise.

• This greater consciousness is experienceed as the source of all material creation. And we as individual consciousness bubbles draw our awareness from this infinite source of power and love and creativity.

If you have a bit more time to read and reflect, let me share with you some of the deeper understandings upon which this meditation program operates.

Life on this planet, as it evolves, does seem to be developing ever most-powerful bubbles of consciousness, so that we become more and more aware of the greater consciousness that is our ultimate source. Certainly for the last five thousand years, human beings all over the world have been consumed in developing religious approaches to contacting and interacting with this trans-personal spiritual dimension of life.

These religious traditions tended to conceptually anthropomorphize (give human characteristics to) the spiritual dimensions they encountered in meditation. God became God the Father with human emotions and so forth. But behind the human concepts and interpretations and imaginations there was the deeper spiritual reality.

In my younger years I explored what appeared to be the deepest of these religious traditions, and they did take me a certain distance. At the same time, like so many people, I strained against the belief systems and the rituals and all the rest of the priestly control, in order to know for myself, my own true identity.

Then I did what so many others have done before me - I dared to put aside the priestly blinders, and aim my attention directly toward the inner source of my own individual awareness.

• In this meditation method and especially in this sixth expansion of consciousness, we take the ultimate leap and simply - look to see the ultimate spiritual truth for ourselves.

This great leap into encountering the source of human consciousness seems to be our current ongoing evolution in consciousness. Each time you move through this seven-step meditation process, you're advancing your own evolution.

Evolution is the process through which life on this planet struggles to sustain itself, by adapting to changing situations. We seem to have reached the evolutionary point where we can consciously choose to evolve - by taking this spiritual leap into greater consciousness.

Why does this leap help us survive?

We have attained the power to transform our own environment. By acting unconsciously through our animal programmings, we're rapidly destroying our environment.

• Only by becoming more conscious, and by bringing more wisdom and love and intelligent choice-making into our lives, can we change our own actions so that we don't destroy ourselves.

In this light, meditation is the new tool of evolution. If we use it effectively, we can contact a higher creative intelligence of the universe, and let this hgigher intelligence diect our behavior.

This is how I see this, from my perspective. I wonder how you see this, and what insights might be wanting to rise to the surface of your mind?

Pause if you want to right now, perhaps close your eyes after reading this paragraph ... watch your breathing ... tune into your heart ... and in this quality of awereness, see what thoughts emerge in your mind, related to this discussion ...

I mentioned earlier the perceptual process that Gurdjieff taught - of reserving a certain percentage of your moment-to-moment attention to focus inward, rather than outward. Let's talk about this a bit more, and then move into the audio experience of this process.

Right now, you are aware, yes?

How do you know you're aware? Well, you can see the words you're reading right now. Perhaps your awareness is contracted to where that's all you're aware of perceptually, or perhaps you're also aware of the air flowing inand out of your nose, and of your body - and a bit of the sounds and sights and space around you in the room. Perhaps you're also aware of thoughts and images that keep springing to mind, stimulated in your mind by the words you're reading ...

• This is you as an individual bubble of awareness, right? An ongoing show of sensory and cognitive events, that someone somewhere inside your body is experiencing.

So there is a presence inside you, that is the observer, correct? And you are somewhat aware sometimes of this presence. That's what it means to be self-aware.

You also have a personality that you are more or less aware of - but who is this personality?

In psychological fact, your personality is an accumulation of memories of things you have done or imagined doing, strung together in your mind loosely so as to generate at least a superficial sense of continuity and identity.

• So this is you - experience, thought, imagination, and memory. Is there anything else to you?

Well, yes. Sometimes you experience flashes of insight where you suddenly perceive the whole at once, and seem to know the truth of the matter. Your creative intuitive self is rather mysterious and science can tell you little about what it is - but you know you have this dimension to you.

Furthermore, when you meditate, this mysteirous intuitive dimension expands another notch, and you experience yourself as connected with something greater than all the sum total of your psychological parts.

• You call this ultra-mysterious dimension your soul, your spiritual self. You sense that this spiritual self is wonderfully compassionate, radically creative, and definitely greater than the universe itself. In fact, your spiritual self seems to be one with the Creator.

All I'm suggesting in this meditation, is that when you arrive at this sixth step in the process, you turn your attention and look directly to the source of your individual awareness - experience as a feeling, your connectedness with your source.

Please note again that I don't have you say, "I am thinking about my source," or "I'm aware of my gigantic concept about my spiritual source." I have you say:

• "I feel connected with my source."

I remember in the Carlos Castaneda books about the spiritual teacher Don Juan Mateus (whom I considered including in this Seven Masters process and often wish I had), that Carlos once asked Don Juan what God was.

Don Juan tapped Carlos in the chest over his heart, and said, "God is a feeling, right there."

• If you turn and look to your inner source of being with your thinking mind, you'll encounter your own concepts. But if you turn and look with your heart as your sensory organ, you'll experience a feeling - a feeling of being connected.

Also, you'll notice that I'm not asking you to fully experience God eye to eye. All I'm suggesting is that you feel your connection. That leaves the nature and intensity and quality of the experience totally up to you...

And what a world it will be, as we evolve to where we remain aware on a regular basis, of our connection with our source - let's do it!

And in that moment of direct connection, you do experientially know who you really are, because your consciousness is connected with your greater being.