The Gurdjieff teachings of levels of consciousness and awakening from sleep.

“Self-criticism is a dead end, it is a particularly negative identification, and 100% mechanical. It leads away from and not towards self-change.” Annie Lou Staveley, The Plan Is Good, p107

On p103 in Maurice Nicoll’s Psychological Commentaries on the Teachings of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky is a diagram of 7 levels of consciousness in humans. 1-3 are asleep and mechanical. 5-7 are awake and conscious. Number 4 is the Balanced Man who is awakening. Beginning on p1527, Maurice Nicoll gives two talks on the idea of Balanced or Awakening Man. He says that we might think of all the Teachings converging on this figure. “To attain a degree of consciousness sufficient to reach even the farthest outskirts of the Conscious Circle of Humanity is something incommensurable with anything that life offers.” p1527 This would be a shift in the feeling of oneself from the horizontal line of past, present, and future—our idea of time—to a sense of above and below, higher and lower levels, on values that are not connected with time but with states. “We value time highly, but we do not seem to value states. Everything valuable gets swept away by time, but the small amount of awakening you had yesterday should be put into the room of your inner memory, outside of time and arranged vertically in a scale of value. Such moments eventually begin to lift us.” Commentaries, p1528 

So, what kind of consciousness does Balanced Man have? “By an extension of consciousness he will no longer derive his feelings of himself from False Personality or Imaginary ‘I’. And by seeing in himself many of the faults he imputes to others, his feelings towards others will completely change.” p1528  Maurice adds that while a person is experiencing these changes gradually, it may feel as if something valuable is being lost. With purification of the Emotional Center, different feelings come. Also, by reflecting on these things and the nature of a balanced person in comparison to our current state, we may perceive what it is necessary to ask for and where to work in ourselves. “If we ask for nothing, we receive nothing—this is the nature of the universe, which can be thought of as response to request.” Commentaries, p1529

Maurice continues: “A balanced man will have lost his soul at one level and found it at another level of his being.” p1529 It is the feeling we have of ourselves that keeps us stuck where we are. M gives an example: someone behaves and speaks in a way that provokes a strong resentful response in me. I rant and rave, I cannot sleep. M calls this “the life way.” p1530 The work way is different: 

First step: instead of being violent and bitter, I observe myself as being so. I now am slightly conscious of my state, and this lets a ray of light in.

Second step: valuing the Teachings, I look for the cause of my reactivity and negativity—in myself, not the other person.

Step three: I reflect—has my usual picture of myself been injured? Is there truth in what was said? Is my picture of myself not always accurate? I can take what was said and observe myself to see if there is truth, and by this, I can broaden my tight picture of myself. By including its opposite, I will be less reactive.

Or, what was said to me that prompted the reaction might be something entirely from the darkness, something that’s never occurred to me about myself—it is not part of my usual picture of myself. M says that if this is the case, it’s very probable that I project this attribute onto others. I might be so irritated by this other person’s behavior because he is me! “So it comes that the faults we dislike most in others are usually those that we display ourselves without being conscious of them.” Commentaries, p1530. This requires awakening to who we really are—the first stage of becoming conscious. “We live in a house with the blinds down. Pulling up the blinds a little hurts at first. Then one can stand a little light and then more. What you took as yourself begins to look like a little prison far away in the valley beneath you.” Commentaries, p1531

Logion 26:
Yeshua says…
You detect a speck in your brother’s eye,
but fail to perceive the beam sticking out of your own.
Remove the timber from your eye,
and you will see clearly enough
to extract the speck lodged in the eye of your brother.

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

All 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.