[MD] Essentialism and the MOQ

[PhaedrusWolff at carolina.rr.com]

Conscious awareness evolves at the fifth level through my remembered 
good impressions increasing awareness. Only a conscious remembering of 
myself can sort through what kind of impressions I have experienced. 
Impressions, air, food are a conscious wake up call for a self 
remembering of good that can lead me to enlightenment at the sixth and 
seventh levels. Good before Truth. 

Hi Joe,

Mind if I join in on this? Ham stopped talking to me, for whatever 
reason. I did try to be polite in my conversation, but maybe I said 
something to insult. I don’t know. 

In the schools that came from Gurdjieff”s works, I imagine like 
anything else, there have been different developments. I think Ham may 
have been right about it becoming “New Age,” but I feel fairly sure 
this was not the intentions of what he and Ouspensky developed. I 
think the “New Age’ aspects of Gurdjieff’s work began in the 70s and 
80s by those followers who were looking for something myserious during 
this period, the same who were turning toward Buddhism, and 
transcendence through meditation. 

In all the different searches for Truth or The Good, I prefer to look 
for similarities as opposed to deny there is any Truth in any of them. 
IMHO there is a degree of Truth in all, but it is more the way we take 
them that questions this Truth. Most of Gurdjieff’s work was oral, and 
was not offered publicly, but kept in the schools, as he and his 
followers felt the public was not ready. Of course, this did offer 
opportunity for followers to use his works for self-gains, so you 
can’t consider all schools of thought to be true to his and 
Ouspensky’s.  

The one thing I see similar in this as with others is the course to 
understanding, such as you say, “Self-remembering.” But, prior to self-
remembering in those followers who ‘seem’, at least to me, not to have 
self-gaining intentions, would be the act of self-observing. This is 
what I pointed to earlier in the conversation with Ham of Pirsig’s 
mention of “self-reflection.” 

Before you could reach a state of self-remembering in their teachings, 
you have to first go through self-observation in order to reach your 
real self. This in and of itself could take years, decades, and it 
takes guidance, something similar to the guidance of the Zen Master, 
and it requires the right guidance, honest and integrity guidance. 

I would relate this loosely to the search for Quality, kinda 
like “Right thinking, right action, right life. Like The Good, we know 
what Quality is. Self-reflection or self-observation might simply be a 
way to get past the phony personalities we have developed, to the real 
personality, or real self, past what Pirsig calls SQ, and Einstein 
called “predetermined prejudices.” 

Any more into this would be irrelevant, as most here are at least 
trying to get away from the Dogmatic belief systems, but I like a 
statement from someone I consider to be a Contemplative Christian, 
Ralph Waldo Emerson;
“ . . . my friend suggested,--‘But these impulses may be from below, 
not from above.’ I replied, ‘They do not seem to me to be such; but if 
I am the Devil's child, I will live then from the Devil.’ No law can 
be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very 
readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after 
my constitution; the only wrong what is against it.” -- read Quality? 

Pretty much what all this says to me is, if we are “a part of a whole, 
a universe” (Einstein again), what created the universe also runs 
through us. The Good, or morality would be natural, and the bad, what 
is not natural in us, is not real. What is not real may come from 
doubt, despair, or the mechanistic-unconscious nature of modern man 
you spoke of. 

This may be why I am intrigued with MOQ. Quality can run through man, 
the world, the universe, and not need defining. It allows us to go 
through our everyday lives, relate to each other, and improve the 
world. If there is a purpose for man in the universe, IMHO Quality man 
will come closer to reaching this purpose than man searching after 
some mysterious truth of the universe. 

Chin

----- Original Message -----
From: Joseph Maurer <jhmau at sbcglobal.net>
Date: Sunday, November 19, 2006 10:27 pm
Subject: Re: [MD] Essentialism and the MOQ
To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org

> On Saturday 18 November 2006 12:27 PM Laramie writes to Joe:
> 
> Good points.
> 
> Do any of the seven orders proposed by Gurdjieff go beyond Pirsig's?
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> 
> Hi Laramie
> 
> Good question.
> 
> I don't have a handle on the orders Gurdjieff proposes. A part of 
> Gurdjieff's 
> methodology is to examine a distinction between cosmic evolution 
> and 
> conscious evolution. Behavior based on cosmic evolution is 
> mechanical. The 
> force of cosmic evolution is so strong, it kind of forces me to go 
> with the 
> flow without much awareness of what I am doing. Conscious 
> evolution leads to 
> enlightenment. I have to remember myself. When I suggested to Bo 
> that a 
> possible explanation of the difference between Subjective and 
> Objective 
> experience is the difference between conscious and cosmic 
> evolution he told 
> me to keep thinking.
> 
> Gurdjieff describes the movement up the octave as needing a shock 
> between 
> the third and forth levels, and between the seventh level and the 
> start of a 
> new octave.
> 
> IMO proprietary awareness is mechanical. Conscious awareness is 
> not 
> mechanical. According to Gurdjieff nature provides the shock of 
> air (breath) 
> between the third and forth levels. An infant grows into a child. 
> A child 
> becomes accustomed to the shock of air with his food to become 
> aware in the 
> forth level. IMO air with food provides the mechanical shock for 
> the 
> proprietary awareness level.
> 
> Conscious awareness evolves at the fifth level through my 
> remembered good 
> impressions increasing awareness. Only a conscious remembering of 
> myself can 
> sort through what kind of impressions I have experienced. 
> Impressions, air, 
> food are a conscious wake up call for a self remembering of good 
> that can 
> lead me to enlightenment at the sixth and seventh levels. Good 
> before Truth.
> 
> Joe
> 
> 
> > Hello Joe,
> >
> > Good points.
> >
> > Do any of the seven orders proposed by Gurdjieff go beyond 
Pirsig's?
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Laramie
> >  ----- Original Message ----- 
> >  From: Joseph Maurer<mailto:jhmau at sbcglobal.net>
> >  To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org<mailto:moq_discuss at moqtalk.org>
> >  Sent: Saturday, November 18, 2006 1:05 PM
> >  Subject: Re: [MD] Essentialism and the MOQ
> >
> >
> >  On Saturday 18 November 2006 10:26 AM Ham writes to Platt:
> >
> >  >snip<
> >
> >  According to Pirsig, existence is everything, and reality is 
> simply a
> >  melding of all differences into Quality. We don't experience 
> things this
> >  way, but we can pretend that differences don't exist. We can 
> also delude
> >  ourselves into thinking that value is morality. We can be 
> Pollyannas and
> >  view the world as a beautiful moral order. This isn't 
> philosophy, it's
> >  poetic fancy. There is no metaphysical or scientific theory to 
> support 
> > such
> >  a view.
> >
> >
> >  Hi Ham, Platt and All,
> >
> >  Ham, when you state: "According to Pirsig, existence is 
> everything, and
> >  reality is simply a melding of all differences into Quality." 
> you have
> >  oversimplified Pirsig's view of evolution as 'melding'. IMO for 
> Pirsig to
> >  propose evolution as moral he is proposing dimensions in 
> existence rather
> >  than 'melding'. Value becomes morality as the analogue to a 
> necessary 
> > order
> >  in existence.  Disorder is a lack of value.
> >
> >  IMO there are 7 orders of existence. The Octave of sound, do, 
> re, mi, fa,
> >  sol, la, ti is an example of this order. The color spectrum is 
> another>  example. The beauty of music, painting, architecture is 
> in the 
> > relationships
> >  in this order in different mediums-- art. The law of seven is 
> proposed in
> >  the esoteric literature of Gurdjieff, Ouspensky, Nicoll, Rodney 
> Collins, 
> > as
> >  well as a law of three for each manifestation.  Pirsig sees 
> four orders 
> > of
> >  existence for morality.
> >
> >  Joe
> > moq_discuss mailing list
> > Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc.
> > http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org
> > Archives:
> > http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/
> > http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
> > 
> 
> moq_discuss mailing list
> Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc.
> http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org
> Archives:
> http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/
> http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
>