Samstag, 14. März 2015

the Meaning of Life is "connaisance"

The true sense of life is "connaisance". All life, all experience, leads to "connaissance".

The world is everything existing. Man, in becoming conscious, becomes conscious of himself and of the world of which he is a part. The function of consciousness is to become aware of his, and its, existence. One's relation with oneself and with the world - this is "connaissance", or knowledge.

Gurdjieff - the Meaning of Life

Dienstag, 10. März 2015

the Influence of Esoteric Schools in Human History

In A New Model of the Universe he writes that these schools are hidden from the eyes of ordinary humanity, but that their influence persists uninterruptedly in history. Their aim, so far as we are able to understand it, is twofold: namely, to help races which have lapsed back into barbarism, and to produce teachers.

According to tradition, the following historical personages came from esoteric schools:
Moses, Gautama Buddha, John the Baptist, Jesus Christ, Pythagoras, Socrates and Plato, as well as the more mythical Orpheus, Hermes Trismegistus, Krishna and Rama. 

Ouspensky also includes in his list of school products the builders of the Pyramids and Sphinx, a few of the old alchemists, the priests of the Egyptian and Greek Mysteries, the architects of the Gothic Cathedrals built in the Middle Ages, and the founders of certain Orders of Sufis and Dervishes.

Kenneth Walker - A Study of Gurdjieffs Teaching