“The joy of good conscience is the accord between the moral rhythms of the lower self and the higher Self.” Meditations on the Tarot

The Nature of Conscience

“The word conscience (“con-science”) contains the idea of balance, for it implies ‘simultaneous knowing’, i.e. knowledge of the facts of the two scales suspended at the extremities of the beam of the balance. Conscience is neither a product nor a function of character. It is above it. And it is here—and only here—that there begins and there is found the domain of freedom.” Valentin Tomberg, Meditations on the Tarot, p196.

“Maurice Nicoll, Psychological Commentaries, p624: “The object of this Work is to awaken Real Conscience, which is the same in everyone. This cannot be repeated often enough.”

“It is sometimes said that if we had Real Conscience the work would be unnecessary for we would know it already.” Maurice Nicoll, Psychological Commentaries, p41.

“You can never make aim unless you see what the Work is about—namely, about yourself and your relationship to Higher Centers or Real Conscience. … You must start from what the Work teaches because the Work replaces Real Conscience for us as we are. It teaches what Real Conscience would teach us if it were awakened in us.” Maurice Nicoll, Psychological Commentaries, p627.

“Gurdjieff said that of all the senses in humans that had atrophied the one that hadn’t atrophied was conscience. It was buried but it was still there. And you could dig it out. And when you did things began to change.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Claymont 2019 Dec Gurdjieff-Teilhard, 44:30 13 – Wednesday Evening Q&A.

Conscience and Selfhood

“The establishment of conscience in a person really comes part and parcel with a radical shift in selfhood. And the two are really inextricable. I don’t know which one starts first because if conscience gets going, it’s going to pull the sense of selfhood along with it. If the sense of selfhood gets going, it’s going to pull conscience along with it.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Encounter with Evil Feb 2023 CA, 0:10 Day 4b Afternoon Teaching.

“Conscience is a mode of selfhood that can begin to bear the nature of the higher laws and bring these into relation with the lower. To be able to fuse with conscience, in other words, to act out of it, or to be able to establish its active presence and influence in our common presence, that means our usual sense with the many ‘I’s’ and three-brained awareness, requires that we are able to be conscious at another level or in another part of ourself.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Encounter with Evil Feb 2023 CA, 58:47 Day 4a Morning Teaching.

Practical Functions of Conscience

“Direct communication between intelligence and Wisdom is, truth to tell, only the development of conscience, which is extended from the domain of action to the domain of knowledge, and is awakened there to the point of becoming the light of intelligence. Conscience has two aspects, notably: a negative aspect (well-known and of which much is made in daily life), which manifests itself as warning disapproving an action before its execution or else as remorse disapproving of an action already committed; and a positive aspect (almost wholly ignored in daily life), which manifests itself as an impulse recommending an action before its execution and as serene joy after its execution.” Valentin Tomberg, Meditations on the Tarot, p511.

“Constant attention to conscience restrains impulsiveness and this latter is therefore raised to a new plane, where it has its expansion. The disciplining of impulsiveness by conscience is the practical sense of ‘to dare’ and ‘to know’. For it is only in harmony with knowledge due to conscience that impulsiveness becomes a ‘legitimate daring’ or moral courage.” Valentin Tomberg, Meditations on the Tarot, p259-260.

“If there’s one practice that I’d encourage you to work with until we meet again in some form or another, it’s that, that hygiene of conscience, the awakening again and again in your moment of life. Conscience, in your, in your pondering, what does this mean? What, how does one act out of conscience? What’s the difference in flavor? What’s the cost?” Cynthia Bourgeault, Claymont 2020 Oct Gurdjieff-Teilhard II, 1:17:11 020-Conscious Circle of Humanity.

“Conscience itself is clear, unilateral, and doesn’t rely on an egoic superego to distribute the goods. If you hear you should do this, you’re probably translating it through your monastic superego. Your conscience just waits patiently until you have somehow gathered the inner force to move where you know you have to go. And then it says, welcome, I’m glad you made it. But it doesn’t nag in the same way that the egoic voice does, because it doesn’t have the agenda, you would be a better person if you did this.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Encounter with Evil Feb 2023 CA, 15:50 Day 4a Morning Teaching.

“Sometimes the stakes are high, but conscience is the beginning point of our ability to speak to evil at the position in the world at the scale at which it can begin to be addressed with authority. Conscience, like most everything else in the inner tradition, is not exactly what it appears to be when we talk about it out in the usual language of culture. And it’s precisely in the nuances and the differentiations that you can begin to see the power of this beautiful agency that everybody notices, everybody responds to, and everybody admires, but who wants to wield it?” Cynthia Bourgeault, Encounter with Evil Feb 2023 CA, 6:02 Day 4a Morning Teaching.

Spiritual Dimensions of Conscience

“The pearl of great price is conscience.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Encounter with Evil Feb 2023 CA, Day 1a Morning Teaching.

“The joy of good conscience is the accord between the moral rhythms of the lower self and the higher Self. The beatitude (Matthew v, 8) promising those who have a pure heart that they will ‘see God’ signifies the accordance of their basic rhythm with the divine rhythm.” Valentin Tomberg, Meditations on the Tarot, p630.

“Gurdjieff’s beautiful and in some ways singular teaching about conscience being the drive-shaft that begins to open the way into the whole reconnection with the heart of our Common Father. And with, in that sense, what is truly right and just in the universe.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Claymont 2020 Oct Gurdjieff-Teilhard II, 2:11 018-Evening Questions.

“The reason that conscience can be seen as objective is because, at least in Gurdjieff’s myth, its ultimate origin is very, very, very far up that Ray of Creation. I would say as the wonderful teaching, of course, and it’s so convoluted in some ways that you almost hate to read it because people are just going to stumble over the big words, but the factors for the being impulse of objective conscience arise in three-brained beings from the localization in their presence of particles of the emanations of the sorrow of our all loving and long-suffering endless creator. That is why the source of manifestation of genuine conscience in three-centered beings is sometimes called the representative of the creator. So, it originates according to this in the localization, you know, in other words, in the concentration in your own body and you’re being able to find it, of the particles of the emanations of sorrow from our common father…..

“Conscience, in some ways you can say it’s the original holy reconciling. It goes back to the first iteration of third force, of that which in the tension of the opposites becomes alive and experiences the anguish, the cost of everything.

“The next thing that is important to say is that conscience is ultimately feeling-centered. You know, if consciousness, particularly as we’ve developed it in the West as we look at it, has more to do with the capacity to see and comprehend, the capacity of conscience is to feel everything. And Gurdjieff or Ouspensky once said: consciousness is to see everything at once, conscience is to feel everything at once.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Encounter with Evil Feb 2023 CA, 15:50 Day 4a Morning Teaching.

Conscience as a Bridge Between Worlds

“Material and impressions of the higher world have to reach us in a roundabout fashion and through some form of translation. The seed of conscience in us is able to compensate for this situation. It can deal with the contrary interaction and translations between worlds of different natures. That’s a powerful statement to do Lectio Divina on. Our conscience can compensate between the rules of law, the laws of World 48, which are basically save your skin at all costs, and the rules of World 24, which walk us deeper and deeper towards the path of pure truth. Conscience then has the potential to move us in the needed direction, even despite ourselves.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Encounter with Evil Feb 2023 CA, 25:00 Day 4b Afternoon Teaching.

“In World 48, the major operating principle is attraction-aversion. In World 24 it becomes conscience. And one of the reasons for a person to be able to get free of attraction and aversion is so that you can follow your conscience and do what conscience tells you must be done.” Cynthia Bourgeault, Stonington 2022 2nd Body, 45:28 1-what-is-second-body.

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Logion 42
Yeshua said:
Be passersby.
(Leloup)

Logion 89
Yeshua says...
For what reason would you only wash
the outside of a cup?
Do you not realize that the creator of the outside
is the one who made the inside as well?

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Valentin Tomberg, Meditations on the Tarot, Jeremy Tarcher, 1985

Page numbers for Maurice Nicoll refer to Psychological Commentaries on the Teachings of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky (Eureka Editions:2020) unless stated otherwise. 

Quotation from the Gospel of Thomas are from Lynn C Bauman, Ward J Bauman, Cynthia Bourgeault, The Luminous Gospels (Praxis 2008)

Jean-Yves Leloup, The Gospel of Thomas, Inner Traditions, 2005

Read the Impression introducing the Gospel of Thomas.