Unsung genius: the overlooked Jungian analyst

Many so-called “depth” psychologists have very little acquaintance with the Jungian analyst Dr. Maurice Nicoll. The historical context is helpful for understanding this anomaly. At the time that Alfred Adler was studying under Jung (he had already asserted his autonomy from Freud), Maurice Nicoll was there with him. Several biographers have noted that Jung had attached a great deal of promise to both Nicoll and Adler, but that in 1921, Nicoll parted company and never looked back. Adler, of course, became an important psychoanalyst and theorist in his own right, one of the first to emphasize social factors in the development of personality. Nicoll was essentially discarded by the mainstream, and in fact Freud is quoted as making a snide remark about him. But Nicoll was actually transcending and not betraying his Jungian background, as his later writings make obvious. Nicoll was a seeker, looking for the clues to transpersonal development. Nicoll had many friends among the psychologists, psychiatrists, authors and physicians associated with the influential quarterly, The New Age with its brilliant editor A.R. Orage. Banding with them, they created a “psychosynthesis” group long before Roberto Assagioli made the term commonplace. Among the group, Rowland Kenny wrote in the fall of 1921 about psychoanalysis that, “it would never help one to re-create one’s own inner being… What we wanted, we decided, was a psychosynthesist.” (Webb). The psychosynthesis group included Havelock Ellis, David Eder, James Young, Rowland Kenny and Maurice Nicoll along with a few other occasional contributors. But as biographer Beryl Pogson details dramatically, it was the introduction to Russian philosopher P.D. Ouspensky in August, 1921 that inspired Nicoll to strike out boldly in a new direction. Nicoll felt that he had found just what he was looking for. And he found it among people who were not established in western academia. Never mind that the scope and depth of vision of what he found far surpassed the western academia he was leaving behind. If you don’t play the game according to the rules, you are trash who existence does not dignify recognition. Therefore, the very Jungian analyst who did the most to show the extent to which Jungian concepts can be successfully employed in the pursuit of transpersonal development and its psychology is the one who name has been deliberately erased from history and science. It is not uncommon to ascribe a mystical dimension to the work of Carl Jung, who himself endorsed a mystical element as important to his psychology. Jung’s own epistemology of mysticism, however, to the extent that it even exists suffers from inappropriate formulation and reductionism. He nevertheless remains in contrast to some of his followers who have retained his psychoanalytic constructs but thoroughly eradicated all transpersonal elements of his teaching. Don’t assume I’m being naïve here – I am aware that some retain the language. But they have violently annihilated what little transcendental meaning was there in the first place. A good example is James Hillman. Having nothing constructive to offer himself apart from rejecting Cartesian dualism and announcing the lack of unity in ego, Hillman does Jungian constructs a great disservice by restricting their domain to the lower fulcra of developmental psychology (as outlined by Ken Wilber). The result is that their remarkable efficacy for the higher fulcra remains undiscovered. Were it not for the spectacular work of Nicoll in this regard, the Jungian genius in its application to transpersonal psychology would remain largely unknown and unexplored. Jung himself never came close to seeing it as Nicoll did. Nicoll has important contributions to make in the fields of psychology, Christian theology and in metaphysics. In psychology, his magnum opus is his six-volume set called Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky. He could have just as well added Jung in the title, as the application of Jungian constructs is almost universal throughout. These two diverse strands of thought, Jungian psychology and fourth way esotericism – along with a third of Christian scriptures - are so seamlessly and harmoniously integrated in these commentaries that it seems they were intended for amalgamation all along. Nicoll applies Jungian constructs to Christian scriptures and to esoteric teachings with an ease and a fit that suggests inevitability. Each of the three strands enhances the other two and reveals additional depth and genius to the originals. In Christian theology, Nicoll has two small jewels. The Mark is a book examining to a large extent Old Testament scriptures. This work only looks second fiddle when compared to the little masterpiece The New Man, which exclusively examines the canonical gospels. The New Man is easily one of the most important theological contributions to come out of the twentieth century. His contributions in metaphysics, apart from scattered content in the commentaries, are found in Living Time and the Integration of the Life. An important biography of Nicoll is Beryl Pogson’s Maurice Nicoll: A Portrait. This biography is nicely done. A couple additional historical references are James Webb, The Harmonious Circle where I took the quote of Rowland Kenny, and C.S. Nott, Journey Through This World.

THE EPISTEMOLOGY OF REVEALED TRUTH

Let me begin with a brief statement about the meaning of epistemology. The term refers to the philosophy of knowing: how do we know, different kinds of knowing, and such issues as the “fit” between the truth content of a knowledge-event and the reality it is supposed to represent. To help you catch onto the point, I’ll use the “fit” statement I just made as an illustration. That “issue” as I presented it actually makes an epistemological assumption. It assumes a dualism between truth and reality, and a “representational” relation between them as in simple mapping. But this is already a presupposed epistemology, and one that has some merit but also has shortcomings in some applications. It is not always appropriate. Does direct perception, like the color of grass, follow this “representational epistemology”? Were you and I to get into a discussion of this question, we would be discussing epistemology. We do not need a great deal of depth in epistemology for the issue at hand. Notice very simply that there are a variety of ways that we can come to know something. We can read it in a book. We can see it with our eyes; hear it with our ears, etc. We can show elements of instinct, we can measure, we can use instruments, we can watch TV, and we can notice what our emotions are telling us. Ultimately, the vast “stew” of the accumulated content of this knowing becomes unwieldy. We develop philosophies and ideologies to help us make sense of the world and organize our thoughts. And different people at different places and times and different cultural contexts have different philosophies and ideologies, sometimes contradictory one with another. This in itself becomes an issue of epistemology – how do we know how to sort out all this mess of diverse ways of interpreting the world? Among the various answers that have been presented to this question, one of the common ones largely in vogue in my own time and culture is social relativism. This seems to be especially popular in ethical philosophy. Social relativism honestly notes that people do not agree and that they also don’t agree on criteria to assess their disagreements, and different positions are taken seriously by different people in different places, times and cultures. Therefore, they argue, it is all relative – there are no objective criteria, and no one can say their version of the truth is any better than someone else’s. Taken to the extreme, I sincerely hope that even the social relativists know this would end up absurd: the answer to two plus two is not relative or culturally dependent. The relativists would counter that I miss the point, as they are not talking about such straightforward facts, but opinion issues and perspectives. And the domain of the content of what is included in that is very broad. All of religious doctrine, for example, belongs squarely in this domain. Therefore, they would say, one person’s opinion is as good as another’s essentially. This is popular even among supposedly intelligent people. I do not see this as intelligent because it leaves no room whatsoever for greater or lesser authority. Sure, people recognize differences of authority in certain categories. No one would let a barber do brain surgery on their child. People seem to understand that in matters of medicine, science, technology and many other fields, there are experts who can be trusted, and these are the people who should be taken seriously. But in matters of the soul, or even very broadly in religion, people will listen to anything. And they will resent even the notion that one should demand a certain credentialed authority. One merely needs to stand behind a pulpit and shout “Jesus” a few times. And yet, it is here as much as anywhere else that competence is critical. It is also exceedingly rare. But I am not just concerned with people who consider themselves true believers. I wish to include a broad, loosely defined group that includes almost all secularists, agnostics, and casual social “Pharisee” church-goers. There is a certain form of relative religious epistemology that can be seen among all of these. Not many, perhaps, take social relativism to the extreme, but most will give a cold reception to any claims that a person knows better on religious subjects than they themselves or, for that matter, than anyone else. They may admit to more knowledge or academic learning, but not more reliability. It is taken as arrogance. One is supposed to admit that one cannot understand these things. You cannot say that you understand certain things. God’s answer to Job is the ultimate epistemology of religion. It is labeled as humility, but more realistically, it is usually a security blanket for a lazy and cowardly mind. What I want to make perfectly clear is that social relativism and spirituality are flagrantly contradictory in their epistemologies. Spirituality denotes the idea of the sacred. In terms of human understanding, it specifically denotes a sacred truth. This is usually to be found in certain writings that are considered to be sacred texts. Thus we have the Bible for Christians, the Koran for Muslims, and so on. Now the fundamental premise behind all sacred texts is the idea of revealed truth. This is what makes the texts sacred – what separates them from ordinary writings. What is revealed truth? It is truth that purports to derive from God or some sort of transcendental level beyond that of ordinary mortal consciousness. It is claimed in principle that this gives the truth a level of authority beyond what ordinary mortals can claim in ordinary states. No one who believes in God would say that God’s opinion is merely on a par with everyone else’s. So social relativism does not pertain to God. By extension, it does not pertain to revealed truth. Revealed truth by very definition says that its knowing is at a greater level of authority than ordinary people in ordinary states. Therefore, the epistemology of revealed truth is incompatible with social relativism. At this point, most people will simply agree and wonder why I am making an issue of this. It is in fact a very important issue, because we have to consider how revealed truth gets to be revealed. We find that the actual ink to the paper comes from human hands. Sacred texts are written in human languages and show human contexts in the times and places of their origin. Structuralists who analyze the texts accordingly might lay bare much of this context, but will face serious challenges trying to unravel the presumed transcendental content. Their toolbox will not have all of the right tools. Sacred texts incorporate built-in metalanguages, as the Russian philosopher P.D. Ouspensky examined in the gospels decades before Barthes. They achieve universalism in time and place (every culture, every age) by means of the tools that can do that: myth, symbol and parable – an insight that, even if not fully articulated, was understood and employed by Jesus, Socrates and Buddha (and their text authors) millennia ago. Many simplistic religious people tout the Bible as the “Word of God” in such a manner as to suggest that Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, the apostle Paul, Moses and the prophets downloaded God’s word on their PC after God handed it to them on a flash drive. Obviously this issue is complex, and a full analysis is beyond the scope of my intentions here. But I wish to reiterate wording I have already employed and state categorically that ordinary people in ordinary states do not write scripture. This is true if you accept the idea of revealed truth. Of course, if you do not accept that idea, you are renouncing the texts as sacred. In that case, you can be a relativist with these texts and tout your own opinion as just as good as those of Jesus Christ. On the other hand, if you find that suggestion outrageous, you are denouncing relativism in regard to these texts. You can’t have your cake and eat it too – it is either one or the other. And to accept the texts as revealed truth in spite of human authorship requires acceptance of my statement that ordinary people in ordinary states do not write scripture. We are confronted directly with the mechanism of revelation – how is revealed truth revealed? Simply put, people cross an epistemological threshold by virtue of transcendental inner states collectively appropriate for the domain of mysticism (for a technically accurate definition of mysticism see my June, 2008 blog post “Proper definitions of “mystic” and “mysticism”). So a person undergoes a mystical state (or a master like Jesus or Buddha attains the state permanently) and is privy while in that state to insight unavailable in more ordinary states. This gives the insight of the person a level of authority that cannot be challenged by people in ordinary states without committing the MTE fallacy (see my June, 2008 blog post “The fallacy of Misconstrued Transcendental Empiricism”). Notice that social relativists would simply denounce the validity of the fallacy (which I applied to transcendental states collectively). But many of these people claim to believe in revealed truth. They may get around the contradiction by saying they accept the concept of revealed truth only for certain texts, which came about as a miracle from God. But they continue to “play ostrich” with the mechanism. They have no epistemology. They are back to the flash drive. They are not facing human authorship and its implications. Now we come to something very interesting. Either we open the door to revealed truth or we do not. If we open that door, we must accept that the door is open and all that is implied by it. We cannot say that the door is open on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays but not on Tuesdays and Thursdays. We cannot say the door is open in Europe and not America. We cannot say that the door was open for Moses but not for Socrates. We cannot say the door was open two thousand years ago but not today. There exists a vast literature of consistent mystical writings that give testimony in virtually all cultures and periods of history to revealed truth. This literature, stripped of cultural embellishments, proclaims in some form or fashion various more-or-less consistent ideas that belong to the body of revealed truth. These ideas are fundamentally consistent in general with the concept of spirituality and its content. Spirituality pertains to the notion of hierarchy in inner development, and the possibility of an inner evolution. In broad strokes, this is what all spirituality proclaims. Revealed truth is consistently concerned with proclaiming that possibility – the “good news” of the gospels – and casting some light upon it. Authentic spiritual traditions ostensibly harbor some portion of an inner technology for achieving this evolution, although the actual practice has always been confined to one-on-one oral teaching and is essentially absent from the literature. Here we find ourselves confronting the MTE fallacy leering in our face. Notice a very curious thing that has just happened here: we can no longer confine our discussion of relative versus revealed epistemology to the issue of sacred texts. Again, either the door is open or it isn’t. If the door is open to revealed truth it is open universally. There will always be mystics and pseudo-mystics. For the real thing, we cannot rule out the possibility of revealed truth from them unless we rule out the entire concept completely in all applications. Mystics can actually know things that are only opinion issues for others. If you do not accept that, don’t turn around and tell me the Bible is the “Word of God”, because you are contradicting yourself. The mechanism is essentially the same. Either both are possible or neither is possible.

PROPER DEFINITIONS OF "MYSTIC" AND "MYSTICISM"

MYSTIC – A person whose mystical experiences have so influenced the person’s perspective and ideology that these cannot be properly understood without taking the mystical aspect into account. MYSTICISM – The acceptance and understanding of the fact that consciousness is hierarchical [or “holarchical”] and that the hierarchy involves epistemological thresholds extending beyond the level of commonplace human experience. NOTE: The definition of “mystic” should be straightforward and non-controversial. I am disposed to say the same about the definition of “mysticism” but readily note that the point will likely not be obvious for many. Indeed, the definition will require some elaboration and unraveling for most readers. That is beyond the scope of this document, but I wish to point out that this definition is both precise and universal. “Precise” means that it offers a scalpel to carefully cut away all content that does not belong, while “universal” means that in so doing nothing is eliminated that should not be eliminated. At the present time I will confine myself to a single example of each to illustrate my meaning more fully. In regards to precise, there are many kinds of remarkable experiences, such as powerful ecstatic emotional states. But this content does not in itself qualify the experience as mystical. If an experience is sufficiently remarkable, it may involve some increase in awareness or consciousness, and thereby qualify it as mystical, but it depends on this component specifically for it to so qualify. In regards to universal, I reject – for example - Evelyn Underhill’s definition involving a vector in the experience toward union with God. This restricts mysticism to theological varieties, which is woefully incomplete. A famous example to the contrary is that of Bertrand Russell, one of the greatest minds of the twentieth century. He speaks openly of himself as a mystic and recounts the story of a single five-minute mystical experience that permanently turned him into a staunch pacifist, whereas he was not one before that experience. And yet Bertrand Russell is also well known as a confessed atheist, and his experience did not change that. I cannot claim to have examined all sources of definitions of these terms, but I have examined large numbers over several decades, and found them all inadequate. I am open to discussion of the definitions here, which are from a primary source that I trust – namely, myself. Perhaps in the near future I will post another short document elaborating more fully on some misconceptions about mysticism. Steve Adams, June, 2008

THE FALACY OF MISCONSTRUED TRANSCENDENTAL EMPIRICISM

A fallacy of epistemology involving equivocation between phenomenology and ideology, and potentially relevant to understand as a culprit in politically incorrect behavior… Yeah, I know – the above is a mouthful. I have tried to think of a way to express it more simply, but I lose the clear meaning and so I find myself accepting the awkward language. The concept behind this fallacy is not new, but I am unaware of anyone else ever attempting to formulate it specifically as a titled fallacy. I find in my own experience that this needs to be done, so I am taking it upon myself to do so – partly for my own efficient future reference in communicating to others about mysticism. This is important for both theoretical and practical understanding, including issues of respect, functional communication and mutual understanding. Let me begin by explaining what I mean by a “fallacy of epistemology”. Epistemology is the philosophy of knowing – how we know, different ways of knowing, how to assess the truth of our knowing, and so on. Especially relevant here is different ways of knowing. A couple of examples will do much of my job of explaining this fallacy. I know that grass is green. I know this directly through perception, and there can be no confusion about it. If I wish to know the distance to Andromeda Galaxy, I can look it up in a book. I do not know the answer the same way that I know grass is green. For one thing, the green color of grass is a part of my actual being – demonstrated by the fact that I would never forget it (if, for example, asked on a test). I would also take issue with anyone challenging the answer. But I trust the answer to the distance to Andromeda. If someone argues, I may suggest a certain window of inaccuracy but continue to assert my faith in the science. Yet a respectful discussion is possible. Also, the answer is not part of my being. It is in personality (acquired) and not essence (innate) so I could forget it on a test. The distinctions drawn above reflect differences in the epistemology of the two examples. No doubt for the two examples given you have no problem with the distinction. But there are certain circumstances where this same distinction commonly fails to be recognized. That, in a nutshell, is the fallacy. You see that the problem does not arise in the above examples because of common ground. You share my experience of the color of grass. One can argue shades of color, or that dried up grass turns brown, but that misses the point – you know the difference between a generic statement and a meticulous accounting. So you accept that arguing over this issue is inappropriate. But should you fail to fully have a common ground in the experience of some truth claim under consideration, you might fail to recognize its character – that this is “grass is green” sort of stuff. In short, you might not recognize the epistemology of the situation as phenomenological, meaning that it pertains to direct perceptions and experiences. You might instead see it as “book learning” sort of stuff, like the distance to Andromeda. Or even worse, you might misconstrue it as an opinionated issue of ideology subject to debate. I could give accounts of actual instances of this fallacy – the fallacy of misconstrued transcendental empiricism – to show that such a thing can and on occasion does happen. At this point we need to look at those two words in the fallacy I have not yet explained. In the context of what I just said, it is not hard to understand why this fallacy would arise in the context of what-is-called transcendental experiences. Whatever else this means, it tells us for our purposes here that we are speaking of the kind of experiences that are not always universally common ground in commonplace experience, and therefore vulnerable to the fallacy. If people do not have common ground for certain kinds of experiences, it is easy for them to doubt their existence. The term mysticism is often invoked to collectively cover this turf, as we find in Ken Wilber. I offer in a separate blog post document a precise definition of this term (please refer to it as needed), but the more broad-stroked usage I just suggested will suffice here. Mystics (real ones) are obvious candidates for the most misunderstood people in the world, and the fallacy – MTE fallacy for short – is indisputably the single most important reason for that. Second place, I’ll mention in passing, goes to pseudo-mystical clap-trap from lunatics and charlatans like virtually all occultists. They make it easy for people to commit the MTE fallacy and remain confident in the soundness of their judgment. The word empiricism conveys an idea very similar to phenomenology. The “phenomenal” world is the world of appearances. The “empirical” world is the world subject to observation. Science studies the empirical world. Science cannot see my inner emotional states, but it can see overt manifestations of them and record my verbal or written accounts of them. That becomes the data for the psychologists. My inner states are empirical to me but to no one else (Ken Wilber’s upper left quadrant). To outsiders, my account of these states is a second-hand “book learning” sort of epistemology subject to considerations of trust (Ken Wilber’s lower left quadrant). But that does not mean the content fails to have an empirical referent. An outsider who denies that is actually accusing me of lying about those states. And, you see, the outsider could do that simply by misconstruing the epistemology of “inner states” as something like “ideology”. Let’s be clear about that: the outsider is not simply claiming I have a different opinion, even if that is what the outsider actually says. An outsider who frames the issue in that manner is committing the MTE fallacy. The outsider might be unaware of any disrespect entailed. Let’s make the fallacy and its ramifications blatantly clear. I can do that easily with a rather silly anecdotal example. My gender is empirical “grass is green” sort of stuff. It may not be so for the reader, but proof can be had – we will not go there. I am a male. Suppose you were to respond to me that I am being too “closed minded”. Perhaps I am a female, or something unspecific. You say that some academic psychologists remain unconvinced of the thorough validity and usefulness of the distinction, some even denying it altogether. I should be open to other opinions. How would I respond to this? In this case, I would be laughing too hard to actually be offended. I would respond in no uncertain terms that I know my own gender, thank you, and you are out of line challenging it. To that you respond that I am not only close minded, but arrogant and stubborn, and obviously not amenable to intelligent discussion. By this point I am probably feeling what-is-called “pissed”, and you are liable to encounter more spectacular examples of this alleged arrogance and stubbornness. The fault will be perceived as mine – arrogance, closed mindedness, etc. But the actual problem is that you have misconstrued the epistemology of the situation. You are treating phenomenology as if it were ideology. You have committed the MTE fallacy. Perhaps you are thinking that nothing nearly as ridiculous as this example would happen in reality and that I am making a mountain out of a molehill in presenting the fallacy. With all due respect, you would be mistaken. You have to understand that the experiences of mystics are typically by very definition (mine) more certain, clear, awake, unclouded, undistorted, unambiguous and reliable than their more commonplace states. (Of course, most of the time for all but a tiny handful of people in the whole of human history, the states of mystics are like that of everyone else – they can forget where they left their car keys, etc. Perhaps they distort the reality of their own being by identifying so heavily with exceptional states, but they more than anyone else can speak meaningfully of the contrast). Although plenty of epistemologically incompetent reductionists deny it, many people know, as I just hinted, that our usual states fall into the general basket of relative consciousness that is in reality less trustworthy than these exceptional experiences. This is why several major philosophies and spiritual traditions call our usual state “sleep” or other such terms denoting its incomplete reliability and “vivifyingness”. Examples are abundant, including the very premise of the entirety of the religion of Buddhism (the title “Buddha” means “the one who is awake”). Mystics are universally well known for proclaiming their position with authority. They say in effect, “I know what I know!” In my own most powerful experience, I proclaimed to myself (paraphrasing closely) that, “As God is my witness, I will never in my ordinary states question or second-guess what I have learned, as I know and mark it down for myself that I will never have the clarity and certainty in ordinary states that I have now!” That was three decades ago, and I kept my promise. I know what that experience was or entails with an essentially comparable kind of clarity, of direct knowing and of certainty as I know my own gender. For me, this is “grass is green” sort of empirical stuff. And claims by reductionists who commit the MTE fallacy with inflexibility and arrogance do not come across to mystics as much less ridiculous and disrespectful than the example of questioning my gender. Their stubbornness carries the weight of social conditioning and sanction, including many respected and popular academicians. An example in the course I am now taking is James Hillman, whose unequivocal and brazen proclamation that all transcendentalism is dangerous (he calls it “titanism”) is just as stupid, just as sick, and just as rude as the silly example of denouncing the concept of gender. And this scary myopia carries the weight of academic respectability. It is the “flatland” of Ken Wilber, whose entire third section of his book “A Brief History of Everything” makes it screamingly clear that this reductionism is the single most dangerous ideological problem facing the academic world today. Personally, I can be very tolerant and understanding of people who commit the MTE fallacy (with a great deal of innocence in most cases). But I am presently involved in a course that has the agenda of tackling these issues directly and attempting to move forward for a vision for the future that takes into account contemporary insights such as those of Wilber. I cannot be other than I am, and cannot avoid revealing in such a context the most fundamentally important fact of my existence – that of my mystical insight. Take that away from me and I am just another digit in one of Annie Dillard’s numbers (referencing her book For the Time Being). Disrespect toward me does not matter – I am not anything to get excited about, and fail to live up to my own ideology. But failure to learn and respect the MTE fallacy is a failure of respect toward the whole circumstance of our species at this point in its history, and a failure to provide it with one of its most important tools for any authentic hope for the future. Steve Adams, June, 2008

The most important short essay on consciousness ever written

NOTE: Before I present the text by P.D. Ouspensky my title above refers to, I wish to place it somewhat in context. The book is, in my opinion, almost unbelievably important, but it has accessibility issues. It must be understood that it is not a work of science, but on the other hand, nor should one be too quick to dismiss it as counter to science because of the way it is written and the way the concepts are packaged. I spent fifteen years myself grappling with how to reconcile the book with science and translate from one to the other. I ultimately discovered that the book needs translation, and in some respects is very badly “packaged” but is nonetheless mostly commensurate with cutting edge science – the more recent the better the fit. This shows that the intuitions of the book (published 1949, based on oral teaching presented from around 1910 to 1925) from a scientific standpoint were precocious. I must admit up front though, that this is not easy to see. The book draws from ancient traditions and retains myth, symbols and terminologies from these ancient non-scientific traditions. So, for example, we have the “ray of creation” from the Gnostics. This is actually very profound, but read as science it is nonsense. Even worse, science terms in at least one place are used in a new application that will never be acceptable: names of elements are used for something different. Nor is this necessary – the usage calls for new words. It was done as a corollary to the ancient philosophical usage of the “four elements” (earth, air, fire and water). The book presents a small part of the teaching of G.I. Gurdjieff (called in the book “G”) who uses what I call “pragmatic absolutism”. Like William James, Gurdjieff cared little for abstract theory that could not be practically applied, and he often spoke in statements too absolute or inflexible for literal abstract acceptance but very appropriate for his practical teaching and work with his pupils. The text below, as is true of the whole book, shows “G” in action discussing matters with his pupils, in this case the issue of consciousness. Notice that all material he presents is part of an actual practical program and that the pupils are following an applied tradition of self-transformation. One last point about Ouspensky: the text introduces a new concept, “self-remembering”. In another of Ouspensky’s books, The Fourth Way, Ouspensky writes, “For me personally …the most interesting idea [of Gurdjieff] was that of self-remembering. I simply could not understand how people could miss such a thing. All European philosophy and psychology just missed this point. There are traces in older teachings, but they are so well disguised and placed between less important things that you cannot see the importance of the idea” (page 13). I can relate to Ouspensky on this. I once had a friend read the text given below who claimed to respect it ostensibly, only to be with him a few days later and find him praising his newly acquired copy of Daniel C. Dennett’s misnomer Consciousness Explained. There is not one word about consciousness in Dennett’s entire book – it only speaks about the content of consciousness. So my friend was just one more “Volinsky” (self explanatory when you read the text). The part about Volinsky below is important. Ouspensky knew what he was talking about in the quote I gave above. In fact, his insistence on the significance and novelty of the idea of self-remembering is enough alone to rank Ouspensky as one of the top most important philosophers of the twentieth century. – Steve Adams Text quote from P. D. Ouspensky, In Search of the Miraculous, chapter seven, pages 116 through top of page 122… On one occasion while talking with G. I asked him whether he considered it possible to attain “cosmic consciousness,” not for a brief moment only but for a longer period. I understood the expression “cosmic consciousness” in the sense of a higher consciousness possible for man in the sense in which I had previously written about it in my book Tertium Organum. “I do not know what you call ‘cosmic consciousness,’ said G., “it is a vague and indefinite term; anyone can call anything he likes by it. In most cases what is called ‘cosmic consciousness’ is simply fantasy, associative daydreaming connected with intensified work of the emotional center. Sometimes it comes near to ecstasy but most often it is merely a subjective emotional experience on the level of dreams. But even apart from all this before we can speak of ‘cosmic consciousness’ we must define in general what consciousness is. “How do you define consciousness?” “Consciousness is considered to be indefinable,” I said, “and indeed, how can it be defined if it is an inner quality? With the ordinary means at our disposal it is impossible to prove the presence of consciousness in another man. We know it only in ourselves.” “All this is rubbish,” said G., “the usual scientific sophistry. It is time you got rid of it. Only one thing is true in what you have said: that you can know consciousness only in yourself. Observe that I say you can know, for you can know it only when you have it. And when you have not got it, you can know that you have not got it, not at that very moment, but afterwards. I mean that when it comes again you can see that it has been absent a long time, and you can find or remember the moment when it disappeared and when it reappeared. You can also define the moments when you are nearer to consciousness and further away from consciousness. But by observing in yourself the appearance and the disappearance of consciousness you will inevitably see one fact which you neither see nor acknowledge now, and that is that moments of consciousness are very short and are separated by long intervals of completely unconscious, mechanical working of the machine. You will then see that you can think, feel, act, speak, work, without being conscious of it. And if you learn to see in yourselves the moments of consciousness and the long periods of mechanicalness, you will as infallibly see in other people when they are conscious of what they are doing and when they are not. “Your principle mistake consists in thinking that you always have consciousness, and in general, either that consciousness is always present or that it is never present. In reality consciousness is a property which is continually changing. Now it is present, now it is not present. And there are different degrees and different levels of consciousness. Both consciousness and the different degrees of consciousness must be understood in oneself by sensation, by taste. No definitions can help you in this case and no definitions are possible so long as you do not understand what you have to define. And science and philosophy cannot define consciousness because they want to define it where it does not exist. It is necessary to distinguish consciousness from the possibility of consciousness. We have only the possibility of consciousness and rare flashes of it. Therefore we cannot define what consciousness is.” I cannot say that what was said about consciousness became clear to me at once. But one of the subsequent talks explained to me the principles on which these arguments were based. On one occasion at the beginning of a meeting G. put a question to which all those present had to answer in turn. The question was: “What is the most important thing that we notice during self-observation?” Some of those present said that during attempts at self-observation, what they had felt particularly strongly was an incessant flow of thoughts which they had found impossible to stop. Others spoke of the difficulty of distinguishing the work of one center from the work of another. I had evidently not altogether understood the question, or I answered my own thoughts, because I said that what struck me most was the connectedness of one thing with another in the system, the wholeness of the system, as if it were an “organism,” and the entirely new significance of the word to know which included not only the idea of knowing this thing or that, but the connection between this thing and everything else. “Not one of you has noticed the most important thing that I have pointed out to you,” he said. “That is to say, not one of you has noticed that you do not remember yourselves.” (He gave particular emphasis to these words.) “You do not feel yourselves; you are not conscious of yourselves. With you, ‘it observes’ just as ‘it speaks,’ ‘it thinks,’ ‘it laughs.’ You do not feel: I observe, I notice, I see. Everything still ‘is noticed,’ ‘is seen.’…In order really to observe oneself one must first of all remember oneself.” (He again emphasized these words.) “Try to remember yourselves when you observe yourselves and later on tell me the results. Only those results will have any value that are accompanied by self-remembering. Otherwise you yourselves do not exist in your observations. In which case what are all your observations worth?” These words of G.’s made me think a great deal. It seemed to me at once that they were the key to what he had said before about consciousness. But I decided to draw no conclusions whatever, but to try to remember myself while observing myself. The very first attempts showed how difficult it was. Attempts at self-remembering failed to give any results except to show me that in actual fact we never remember ourselves. “What else do you want?” said G. “This is a very important realization. People who know this” (he emphasized these words) “already know a great deal. The whole trouble is that nobody knows it. If you ask a man whether he can remember himself, he will of course answer that he can. If you tell him that he cannot remember himself, he will either be angry with you, or he will think you an utter fool. The whole of life is based on this, the whole of human existence, the whole of human blindness. If a man really knows that he cannot remember himself, he is already near to the understanding of his being.” All that G. said, all that I myself thought, and especially all that my attempts at self-remembering had shown me, very soon convinced me that I was faced with an entirely new problem which science and philosophy had not, so far, come across. But before making deductions, I will try to describe my attempts to remember myself. The first impression was that attempts to remember myself or to be conscious of myself, to say to myself, I am walking, I am doing, and continually to feel this I, stopped thought. When I was feeling I, I could neither think nor speak; even sensations became dimmed. Also, one could only remember oneself in this way for a very short time. I had previously made certain experiments in stopping thought which are mentioned in books on Yoga practices. For example there is such a description in Edward Carpenter’s book From Adam’s Peak to Elephanta, although it is a very general one. And my first attempts to self-remember reminded me exactly of these, my first experiments. Actually it was almost the same thing with the one difference that in stopping thoughts attention is wholly directed towards the effort of not admitting thoughts, while in self-remembering attention becomes divided, one part of it is directed towards the same effort, and the other part to the feeling of self. This last realization enabled me to come to a certain, possibly a very incomplete, definition of “self-remembering,” which nevertheless proved to be very useful in practice. I am speaking of the division of attention which is the characteristic feature of self-remembering. I represented it to myself in the following way: When I observe something, my attention is directed towards what I observe – a line with one arrowhead: I -> the observed phenomenon. When at the same time, I try to remember myself, my attention is directed both towards the object observed and towards myself. A second arrowhead appears on the line: I ↔ the observed phenomenon. Having defined this I saw that the problem consisted in directing attention on oneself without weakening or obliterating the attention directed on something else. Moreover this “something else” could as well be within me as outside me. The very first attempts at such a division of attention showed me its possibility. At the same time I saw two things clearly. In the first place I saw that self-remembering resulting from this method had nothing in common with “self-feeling,” or “self-analysis.” It was a new and very interesting state with a strangely familiar flavor. And secondly I realized that moments of self-remembering do occur in life, although rarely. Only the deliberate production of these moments created the sensation of novelty. Actually I had been familiar with them from early childhood. They came either in new and unexpected surroundings, in a new place, among new people while traveling, for instance, when suddenly one looks about one and says: How strange! I am in this place; or in very emotional moments, in moments of danger, in moments when it is necessary to keep one’s head, when one hears one’s own voice and sees and observes oneself from the outside. I saw quite clearly that my first recollections of life, in my own case very early ones, were moments of self-remembering. This last realization revealed much else to me. That is, I saw that I really only remember those moments of the past in which I remembered myself. Of the others I know only that they took place. I am not able wholly to revive them, to experience them again. But the moments when I had remembered myself were alive and were in no way different from the present. I was still afraid to come to conclusions. But I already saw that I stood upon the threshold of a very great discovery. I had always been astonished at the weakness and the insufficiency of our memory. So many things disappear. For some reason or other the chief absurdity of life for me consisted in this. Why experience so much in order to forget it afterwards? Besides there was something degrading in this. A man feels something which seems to him very big, he thinks he will never forget it; one or two years pass by – and nothing remains of it. It now becomes clear to me why this was so and why it could not be otherwise. If our memory really keeps alive only moments of self-remembering, it is clear why our memory is so poor. All these were the realizations of the first days. Later, when I began to learn to divide attention, I saw that self-remembering gave wonderful sensations which, in a natural way, that is, by themselves, come to us only very seldom and in exceptional conditions… Sometimes self-remembering was not successful; at other times it was accompanied by curious observations. I was once walking along the Liteiny towards the Nevsky, and in spite of all my efforts I was unable to keep my attention on self-remembering. The noise, movement, everything distracted me. Every minute I lost the thread of attention, found it again, and then lost it again. At last I felt a kind of ridiculous irritation with myself and I turned into the street on the left having firmly decided to keep my attention on the fact that I would remember myself at least for some time, at any rate until I reached the following street. I reached the Nadejdinskaya without losing the thread of attention except, perhaps, for short moments. Then I again turned towards the Nevsky realizing that, in quiet streets, it was easier for me not to lose the line of thought and wishing therefore to test myself in more noisy streets. I reached the Nevsky still remembering myself, and was already beginning to experience the strange emotional state of inner peace and confidence which comes after great efforts of this kind. Just round the corner on the Nevsky was a tobacconist’s shop where they made my cigarettes. Still remembering myself I thought I would call there and order some cigarettes. Two hours later I woke up in the Tavricheskaya, that is, far away. I was going by izvostchik to the printers. The sensation of awakening was extraordinarily vivid. I can almost say that I came to. I remembered everything at once. How I had been walking along the Nadejdinskaya, how I had been remembering myself, how I had thought about cigarettes, and how at this thought I seemed all at once to fall and disappear into a deep sleep. At the same time, while immersed in this sleep, I had continued to perform consistent and expedient actions. I left the tobacconist, called at my flat in the Liteiny, telephoned to the printers. I wrote two letters. Then again I went out of the house. I walked on the left side of the Nevsky up to the Gostinoy Dvor intending to go to the Offitzerskaya. Then I changed my mind as it was getting late. I had taken an izvostchik and was driving to the Kavalergardskaya to my printers. And on the way while driving along the Tavricheskaya I began to feel a strange uneasiness, as though I had forgotten something. – And suddenly I remembered that I had forgotten to remember myself. I spoke of my observations and deductions to the people in our group as well as to my various literary friends and others. I told them that this was the center of gravity of the whole system and of all work on oneself; that now work on oneself was not only empty words but a real fact full of significance thanks to which psychology becomes an exact and at the same time a practical science. I said that European and Western psychology in general had overlooked a fact of tremendous importance, namely, that we do not remember ourselves; that we live and act and reason in deep sleep, not metaphorically but in absolute reality. And also that, at the same time, we can remember ourselves if we make sufficient efforts, that we can awaken. I was struck by the difference between the understanding of the people who belonged to our groups and that of people outside them. The people who belonged to our groups understood, though not all at once, that we had come in contact with a “miracle,” and that it was something “new,” something that had never existed before. A. L. Volinsky, whom I had met and with whom I had talked a great deal since 1909 and whose opinions I valued very much, did not find in the idea of “self-remembering” anything that he had not known before. “This is an apperception.” He said to me, “Have you read Wundt’s Logic? You will find there his latest definition of apperception. It is exactly the same thing you speak of. ‘Simple observation’ is perception. ‘Observation with self-remembering,’ as you call it, is apperception. Of course Wundt knew of it.” I did not want to argue with Volinsky. I had read Wundt. And of course what Wundt had written was not at all what I had said to Volinsky. Wundt had come close to this idea, but others had come just as close and had afterwards gone off in a different direction. He had not seen the magnitude of the idea which was hidden behind his thoughts about different forms of perception. And not having seen the magnitude of the idea he of course could not see the central position which the idea of the absence of consciousness and the idea of the possibility of the voluntary creation of this consciousness ought to occupy in our thinking. Only it seemed strange to me that Volinsky could not see this even when I pointed it out to him. I subsequently became convinced that this idea was hidden by an impenetrable veil for many otherwise intelligent people – and still later on I saw why this was so.

A QUOTE ON THE AUTHORITY OF MYSTICS

NOTE: Those sharing with me the course “Modern Problems of Belief” will likely discover that I can and probably will speak comparably to the quote below over the duration of the course, and I do not require someone else to say what is said here for me. However, I wish to note that I am not a lone voice in speaking about mystical authority as Rhea Miller does here. For example, Ken Wilber in numerous places in A Brief History of Everything and in many of his other books makes the same or similar points. There are other examples I could give, including many of the top scientists and philosophers of the twentieth century. But I like what Miller says and the way she says it, and so I share it with you. – Steve Adams, June, 2008 From: Rhea Y. Miller, Cloudhand, Clenched Fist, pages 53-54… One of history’s best kept secrets is that mystics are reformers, if not outright revolutionaries, precisely because of their authority. Contrary to public opinion, mystics are not wimpy, hidden away, uninvolved, “other worldly” folk. Mystics experience a vision, a new way of seeing; they believe in these visions and act upon them. Mystics exude authority. Mystics quite regularly shake up worldviews… The fact of the matter is that the authority, or truth of a knowledge-event or mystical event, is rarely given the opportunity to be verified, due to political agendas. [I would add social, religious, economic, scientific, and other agendas – SA] The problem is not that there is no way in which to verify the authority of a knowledge-event or mystical event. The problem is that such events are so threatening that we rarely have the opportunity to examine them before the mystics and their ideas are whisked away, belittled, dismissed, swept under the carpet, or destroyed. The irony is that the real danger lies not in the true mystical or knowledge-event but in the idolatry. Gestalt therapist Barry Stevens has provocatively asked why, when someone steps out of line, we order them back into line rather than asking them where they are going or what they are seeing. When we stop questioning and assume that what is “re-presented” to us is the truth, without ourselves experiencing its validity or authority, we engage in idolatry.