Seeker After Truth

“Well, they didn’t want an impressionable young man like me exposed to a wildman like Gardner Murphy, so they got me a postdoctoral fellowship in California at the peak of the psychedelic revolution and saved me from all those wild influences in Kansas.”

“Do you want to experience non-dual consciousness when you are crossing the street and that truck swings around the corner and is bearing down on you?”

“Any state of consciousness is probably a very good tool for dealing with certain aspects of reality and a very poor tool for others … the point is to know what tool is good for the situation you’re in and get in to a state of consciousness that’s useful for that.”

” I think increasing your self-knowledge, learning to observe yourself … to put it in scientific terms, make a lifelong scientific project out of understanding your own mind, and your own feelings and perceptions, is a really important part of all this.”

Within three weeks I could describe Aikido much better than my teacher could. And I could relate it to different philosophies, and psychological developments, and world religions. But I noticed I couldn’t actually do anything.”

“But the informational junk we put in is far and away the biggest pollution in life. These other environmental things are important, but when I think about the crap we put into our minds, with no discrimination, with no awareness, that’s the major source of pollution.”

“But I do know this: if we decide ahead of time that you can’t have Digital Darshan, it will work out that way….If you set up a limitation and you are thinking about something ahead of time, your mind will tend to make that come true.”

“It’s a real hard discrimination: am I being present in a way that will remind somebody else to be more present to their own reality, or am I being seductive and hypnotic and laying a trip on someone, even if I think it’s for their own good, which is not at all the same thing as trying to give somebody a feeling of becoming more awake.”

“[I]f I were wise enough to start a new religion, I would combine Buddhism and Gurdjieff work because we need both. It’s not enough to feel mindful and clear on your cushion, you’ve got to get some of that mindfulness out into everyday life. That’s where we make our screw-ups.”

“I don’t think most spiritual teachers understand the problem of transference … when you are in the teacher role, and people start giving you this extra attention and this transference adulation, it’s really dangerous to you. It gets you high, it makes you unaware of your own limitations and your own flaws.”

“I like my plumber. He’s a really neat guy. But I would not ask for his advice on my spiritual life or how to invest my retirement money. Can we have the maturity to say that somebody may be extremely good in some area of life, for example in an area that we label “spiritual,” but not necessarily know everything about all aspects of life?”

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“Tiger got to hunt. Bird got to fly. Man got to sit and wonder: why, why, why? Tiger got to sleep, bird got to land, man got to tell himself he understand.”

“It’s clear to me that Gurdjieff was right: most of us are walking around in very deep trance states, very deep dreamlike states; we’re making a lot of mistakes that way, we’re creating a lot of unnecessary suffering for ourselves and other people. Let’s get back to the present and form that firm foundation of being able to live in the here and now and be clear in your perceptions and actions. With that foundation, a lot of the higher stuff will start taking care of itself.”

“If you do these other kinds of exercises, these self-remembering and self-observation kinds of things, you can develop a certain kind of presence. You do develop a certain kind of willpower. I don’t normally use that word — “willpower” — you think of straining and being constipated and forcing and whatnot, but you do develop more ability to pay sustained attention to what’s going on, and that pays off. That leads to real intelligence and compassion.”

“But the sadness of the ordinary human condition is that we’re trapped by our thoughts. We’re not using our thoughts; our thoughts are carrying us away. That’s what Gurdjieff meant by “we live in a dream.” We’re not awake. It’s a sad but important thing about the world. And it has enormous consequences.”

“I would come up with a Buddhist injunction here: don’t get attached to the concept. It’s one of those things that’s at least partly true, and it’s useful to know that. We certainly do create a lot of our own reality. On the other hand, we’re not the only person around.”

“Why don’t you try coming present and see what happens?”

“[I]f you cut out some of those thoughts, then maybe you can hear your feelings more clearly, and have time to empathize with other people, to feel more compassionate about them, to touch some of the deeper stuff within. I’m recommending it.”

“I think maybe we can end this by just inviting people that when this fades into nothingness, to just stay there, being aware of their bodies, their breathing, their perceptions of the world around them without feeling a need to hurry to get somewhere else. Even if only for a few seconds. See what that’s like. See what the taste is like….”