Intellectual presence decreases our alertness to present moment awareness.
“The whole work is based on extending the diameter of the present moment through conscious awareness so that it spans the gap from your birth to your death. It is possible to become so fully attentive and implanted in your life in a different place that you understand these things.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Claymont 2012 Gurdjieff for Christian Contemplatives, 39:10 01 Tuesday Evening Session.
“Anything that takes us into the more abstract intellectual presence is gonna decrease our alertness to present moment awareness.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Holding Our Planet 2024, 30:29 20 Thurs am Teaching.
“The point of intersection of the vertical with the horizontal line is now. But this point only becomes now in its full meaning if a man is conscious. When a man is identified there is no now for him. If he is asleep in Time, being hurried on from past to future, identified with everything, there is no now in his life. There is not even a present moment. On the contrary, everything is running, everything is changing, everything is turning into something else; and even the moment so looked-forward to, so eagerly anticipated, when it comes is already in the past.” Maurice Nicoll, Commentaries, p102
“We see only a point in Time and then another and so on, and we call them present moments. Notice well that our five senses only work in the present moment, only register the present moment—not the past or the future. To see this clearly is the starting-point, in my opinion, of being able to understand something about dimensions beyond the senses. Do you realize clearly that you can only see or handle or taste an apple in the present moment? You cannot do so a moment ago or a moment hence—that is, in the past or in the future. So you are limited to this doubtful thing called the present moment, and all else we call past or future and regard as having no real existence. So we limit all possible existence to the present moment and imagine God exists only in it. This is called in this teaching, however, a cross-section of Time. Yet we are never in contact with this fleeting present moment to which we confine all existence. It is actual—yet it is doubtful—not to the senses but to consciousness. Our senses relate us to a present moment but our consciousness does not. We are not conscious in this present moment of the senses. It is too small and too quick to be properly conscious in. Our consciousness, working above sense, is a mingled confused thing, composed of past, present and anticipated future. By memory and by imagination we tend to live behind or in front of the present moment and cannot crowd ourselves into it. So we are never really in the external world as registered by the senses. They render things as it were like a succession of photographs made to follow in moving rapid succession, like a film. Yet, strange to say, each present moment is eternal. The present moment is both in Time and in Eternity. It is the meeting-place of Time and Eternity. Eternity enters every present moment in moving Time, at right angles to it. That is why, sometimes, in a state of Self-Remembering—that is, in the 3rd State of Consciousness—we feel Eternity.” Commentaries, p944.
“Man is both in Time and in Eternity. Eternity is vertical to Time —and this is the direction of Self-Remembering—the feeling of oneself now. Every now is eternal. To remember oneself the feeling of now must enter—I here now—I myself now—I distinct from past or future—the newness of myself—I now. And if the act is successful you will know for yourself that Eternity is always in now and can be experienced as a different taste from Time. Notice that I do not speak any longer of the present moment registered by the senses, but of now, of this internal experience that Self-Remembering can actually give. Real ‘I’ is in Eternity—not in Time. Self-Remembering is out of Time and Personality. It is not surprising that Self-Remembering can give a feeling utterly different from that given by our relation to hurrying, anxious Time. Essence, being eternal, has not the feelings of Personality which are of Time only. To think from Time gives no real feeling of oneself.” Commentaries, p945
“The ultimate aim in life is the Good. If we say that at the summit of things is Good then it is prior to everything else and so is first in scale, but in time it looks as if knowledge comes first. All knowledge should lead to Good. Therefore Good is first in scale, although to our senses, which are in time and only see a cross section of all existence called the present moment, it looks the other way round.” The New Man, p55.
Logion 50
Yeshua says...
Suppose you are asked,
"Where have you come from?"
say, "We have come from the Light at its source,
from the place where it came forth
and was manifest as Image and Icon.
If you are asked, "Are you that Light?"
say, "We are its children,
and chosen by the Source, the Living Father."
If you are questioned,
"But what is the sign of the Source within you?"
say, "It is movement and it is rest."
Read another Impression on this topic.
Page numbers for Maurice Nicoll refer to Psychological Commentaries on the Teachings of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (Eureka Editions:2020) unless stated otherwise.
Page numbers for Maurice Nicoll’s The New Man refer to Martino Fine Books, Eastford CT, 2019
Quotations from the Gospel of Thomas are from Lynn C Bauman, Ward J Bauman, Cynthia Bourgeault, The Luminous Gospels (Praxis 2008)
Read the Impression introducing the Gospel of Thomas.
0 Comments