The Making of Man. An exposition of Teachings of George Gurdjieff PDF
Preview The Making of Man. An exposition of Teachings of George Gurdjieff
THE MAKING OF MAN hr KENNETH WALKER Routledge & Kegan Paul LONDON First published 1963 by Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd Broadway House, 68-y4 Carter I*ane London E.C.4 Printed in Great Britain in the City of Oxford at the Alden Press © Kenneth Walker 1963 No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except for the quotation of briefp assages in criticism m 5 CONTENTS I. Man as an Experiment page i II. Levels of Consciousness . 18 III. Essence and Personality 34 IV. A Private Talk with Ouspensky 40 V. Identification 48 VI. The Cosmos and Cosmic Laws 56 VII. Esoteric Knowledge 69 VUL Alchcmistry and the Separation of the Dross from the Gold 78 IX. Lyne Place is Mobilized for War 90 X. The Death of Ouspensky 103 XI. Rue des Colonels R^nards no XII. Gurdjieff as a Teacher 124 XIII. Special Movements and Dances 136 XIV. The Death of Gurdjieff 142 XV. A Commentary on A ll and Everything 151 Bibliography 160 Index 161 PLATES Frontispiece Gurdjieff. A photograph taken in Paris. Between pages ?2 and y j Earlier photograph of Gurdjieff in Russia, c. 1916. The Great Prayer, a demonstration in London. vi When there is a complete silence in the being, either a stillness of the whole being, or a stillness behind, unaffected by surface movements, then we can become aware of a Self, a spiritual substance of our being, an existence exceeding even the soul’s individuality, spreading itself into universality, surpassing all dependence on any natural form or action, extending itself upwards into a transcendence of which the limits arc not visible. It is these liberations of the spiritual part in us which arc the spiritual evolution in nature. SRI AUROBINDO On the Evolution of the Spiritual Man Man is in the Making but henceforth he must make himself. LOWES DICKINSON I MAN AS AN EXPERIMENT LIFE ON THIS PLANET CAN BE LOOKED UPON as being a great experiment for us all, as individuals, for we have to learn, by trial and error, how best to live. It is also an experiment for humanity as a whole. Nature has made many different experiments with different forms of life, and some of her designs have proved successful. Others have been dismal failures and have had to be wiped off the surface of the earth. The great slow-witted and slow-moving reptiles of the Reptilian Age were examples of nature’s failures, and in course of time, they were replaced by the far cleverer mammals and birds. Nobody knows what will be the ultimate outcome of the great human experiment now being carried out in the great laboratories of the Solar System, the experiment of producing a self-evolving being capable of reaching a higher level by his own efforts. This is an experiment which, in the opinion of Ouspensky, is still in progress. In support of his thesis Ouspensky has pointed out to us that man is a far more complicated form of living organism than is required merely for the purposes of surviving, and of propagating itself on this planet. Man has been endowed with the special organs which arc required for his attaining a higher level of existence by his own efforts. To quote Ouspensky's words: You must try to understand what is meant by the statement that man is potentially a self-developing organism. It docs not mean that man is ready-made, but that he must discover both himself and the path which he has to follow. i Man as an Experiment Aid and advice have been given to man from time to time by the inspired religious teachers who have visited this planet, and it is noteworthy that the instructions given to him have always been the same. They arc such as to assist him to raise the level of his consciousness and thereby to exercise a greater measure of control over himself. Many other writers have written along similar lines, on the subject of the future evolution of man. In The Meaning of Evolu tion Gaylord Simpson writes: It is false to conclude that man is nothing but the highest animal, or the most progressive product of organic evolution. He is a fundamentally new sort of animal, and one in which ... a fundamentally new sort of evolution has appeared. What does Gaylord Simpson mean by a new sort of evolution? He means a form of evolution which is entirely different to the mechanical form of evolution described by the Darwinians. The Darwinian form of evolution depends on two factors; first on the accidental appearance in the offspring of variations which have been inherited from the parents, and second, on the sifting action of the struggle for survival on the inheritors of these chance variations. Offspring which have been born with favourable characteristics arc more successful in the fierce competition for survival, whilst those inheriting less favourable variations perish and leave no offspring. The evolution to which Gaylord Simpson and Ouspensky arc both referring in their writings is an entirely different kind of evolution from this. It is an evolution which depends on the efforts made by the organism, not only to survive, but to attain a higher level of being. But again, what is meant by the phrase ‘A higher level of being*? That will depend on the nature of the organism to which reference is made. In the case of a man it means the further develop ment of that particular feature in man which distinguishes him from all the animals, namely, his self-awareness, or conscious ness. Man’s further evolution would mean, therefore, his gradual transformation from a semi-conscious into a more fully conscious organism. The factors by which this can be brought about, and 2
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