feeding the moon or feeding the sun?

You said last year that if a great many people practised this method fully it might be disastrous.

Orage: Yes, if a great many people commenced to feed the sun it might cause a cosmic disaster - but this is not possible practically. Another function of man is to cease feeding the moon and only feed the sun - but then again that is conditioned on the quantity of the necessary substance available - and it is limited. 

It is not possible for very many people to even begin to practise the first three steps of this method - self-observation, participation and Experimentation - to say nothing of conscious labor and voluntary suffering. So the possibility of the work is always limited - say as the quantity of radium is limited. (This certainly relieves my emotions of worry over my fellow beings.) But, practically no one need fear that there will not be enough of the necessary chemicals available for his own use.

Orage´s Commentary on "Beelzebubs Tales to his Grandson" p.77

30.000 perceptions per second

The number of perceptions that we are receiving is 30.000 per second.

10.000 intellectual, 10.000 emotional, 10.000 instinctive. 

These determine our content in our three centers, but from birth we have been aware of only a fraction of 1%.

A.R. Orage - Commentary on "Beelzebubs Tales to his grandson" p.16

the Higher Mind (falcon) Higher Intellectual Center

There can appear an awareness, or higher mind, which stands behind our thought. Adie described this by reference to ancient Egyptian statues showing a falcon perched at the back of the human head with its wings spread. When that higher mind is present, we do not have to lose ourselves in our mentation, although we are so used to this forgetting of ourselves that we believe it is inevitable. One can experience silence even while talking and moving, for the higher mind which observes the activity of the lower faculties does not comment in words, and is above hurry, anxiety or fear. Perhaps the silence is actually the receptive self-awareness possible when thoughts, feelings and sensations do not prepossess the soul. St Augustine wrote that peace is “the tranquillity of order”.

George Adie - A Gurdjieff pupil in Australia

Describing G.I. Gurdjieff by Planet Karatas on Scribd

the Purpose of Life

Men have mind and women feelings more highly developed. Men must feel, and women must think—both must be fused into one for real understandings. Either alone can give nothing. Think what you feel, and feel what you think. Fusion produces another force.

Religion for some is useful, for others policeman. We fully realize small terrors, as for example, finding a mouse in our beds, but we cannot realize the terror—of death. If we did we would live differently. But life prevents us realizing this.

Purpose of Life. Just vibration transmitters. Moon-fodder. We are sheep kept to provide wool for our masters, who feed us and keep us as slaves of illusion. But we have a chance of escape and our “masters” are anxious to help us, but we like being sheep. It is comfortable.

Gurdjieff
12th February 1924
"Gurdjieffs Early Talks"

He who knows his moon can understand the cosmos

Kundalini at base of spine prevents our seeing things as they are; it is the representative of the moon; it is necessary for life, for if we saw things as they were we’d hang ourselves.

He who knows what his moon is and does can understand the cosmos.

G.I. Gurdjieff
Gurdjieff´s Early Talks 1914-1931

bravery in war is only a manifestation of mass hypnosis

All wars, all disputes, all misunderstandings, all misfortunes, all experiences which seem terrible when they occur, when they have passed we can see are not worth a hall-penny. In this sense, as if from a fly one should get an elephant, and now from an elephant a fly. The reason for this is always the same property of the man, that he reflects reality in the reverse.
 

During such events, all are slaves, and all are under a general hypnosis. Where is the dignity attributed to man? Where is man with his free will?

It was always so and it will be always so with the masses, because if there will not be slaves, there will not be masters, there will not be life.

But at the same time, to some men it is given to get out from beneath the mass hypnosis. Men so little realize this mass hypnosis, that the one who is more or less free from it, appears as a being of a lower order.

That which is called bravery in war is really only a manifestation of this mass hypnosis. There exist whole nations which reckon the others cowards, as for example, the Russians the Jews. But the Jewish drummer who, according to the understanding of the Russians, out of cowardice hides in a ditch during the battle, is really a more normal man, more free than they are. That which he has is personal, while for the others, everything personal is missing. There remains only the mass hypnosis. He is the slave only of his personal qualities, while they are twice slaves.

 G.I. Gurdjieff

Lecture(Pre-Institute)