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From the Book: “The Herald of Coming Good” – 3 States of Consciousness

Postel-premiers Elements

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‘ One of the three states of consciousness, which, in the objective sense, is considered the highest and most desirable for man, reposes exclusively on associations of previously perceived impressions of the third category only.

The second state of consciousness is made up of the associations of impression of the second order mentioned above, that is, of those voluntarily perceived.

To the third state of human consciousness can be attributed, without any difficulty, the kind of consciousness for which the modern man, in his desire to emphasize its great importance and never doubting the correctness of his denomination, has adopted the expression of ’ waking-state-of-consciousness’.

This state of consciousness, which modern man ranks highest, has, according to scientifically organized and carefully verified experimental elucidations, proved to be the product of constantly repeated, involuntarily and accidentally perceived, as well as of artificially created and ‘ learnt by rote’ impressions.

The majority of people today, as a consequence of the continually deteriorating conditions of their normal existence, have become accustomed to give priority to this consciousness, which is attained by the impressions just mentioned, that is, by the ‘learnt by rote’, involuntary perceptions of accidental impressions received from our environment.

In the man who attains his highest degree of consciousness by means of associations, composed of impressions of the first kind, the processes of imaginations, memory, judgment, reasoning and thinking, are no more than an automatic crystallization, resulting from his so-called ‘concentrated efforts’, which process he calls by the high sounding name of ‘ attention’, whereas these already crystallized and automatically perceived impressions, in other words all the processes of this man’s inner world are only an automatic reviewing in various combinations of the oft repeated experiences of, so to speak, ‘antiquated impressions.’ And this man’s manifestation in ordinary life, all his impulses, thoughts, feelings, words, convictions, beliefs and deeds, are made up exclusively from the material of such impressions in their various combinations, crystallized in his entirety.

And these combinations are formed under the influence of chance shocks which set in motion more or less intensively one or another group of previously perceived impressions, which, in the given case, become the center of associations.

Each new shock, or a shock of a different degree of intensity, evokes yet another association and, consequently, another train of thought, feeling and action, etc., and no center in the possessor of such consciousness can add anything of its own or anything new to the combinations thus formed, nor can the center, even when acting at its moment of greatest intensity, draw on the material formed in other centers.

It follows that, as the world perception of the possessor of such a consciousness is always come by only by one part of him or, in other words, as the possessor of such a three diverse processes of perception, which have but little in common or associate by chance and only partially, each of his judgments, as the product of one part only of his psyche and the expression of a part of the material at his disposal, is invariably one-sided and, as a result, necessarily erroneous.

From what has just been said it must be obvious to every sane-thinking person that the first task necessary for the real education of man is to develop in each separately formed center the natural need to blend simultaneously the functions of one part with the other, in order that the manifestations of these three parts formed separately according to the laws of nature in man’s general psyche, and which inevitably demand a separate education, may be harmoniously united, and may, in the period of responsible life, work together according to their normal capacities.

Only this attitude in the preparing of man for responsible life can bring the different sources composing man’s general psyche to the same level of manifestation, as only then will the three principal wheels of the human machine work smoothly, without hindrance to their mutual work and yield the highest degree of productivity in their separate functioning, as well as in the attainment of that level of consciousness attainable by man but which man never reaches under ordinary conditions.

Taking into consideration that the degree of development in each individual of each part of his whole individuality differs, and that his associations likewise differ, we are forced to the conclusion that the work of educating and re-educating each person must be strictly individual and cannot be otherwise.

All the faults in the functioning of the human machine, due to the conditions of ordinary life, increase with time, and any repair of the machine at work can only obtained by a constant and determined struggle against all the resulting defects.’

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From Mister Gurdjieff’s ‘ The Herald of Coming Good’. Paris, 1933-page 34-35.

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