/lit/ - Literature

>>20400769
A person who thinks they are already fully developed conscious people, as Gurdjieff would note, will view with skepticism anyone pointing out or claiming that they can in fact become more conscious, more spiritually developed.

Even if they themselves and we overall, are unhappy, undeveloping, unfulfilled, mechanical and empty people with lots of bad habits and an endless sense of “There must be something more to life,” they and we will endlessly degrade those who claim to be offering a way beyond it.

They (and we in general) do not have mumuksha, desire for moksha, the burning desire for enlightenment which draws one out of ordinary life and into or around the edges of a school or pathway which offers awakening, which Gurdjieff and Ouspensky call in their own phraseology “the magnetic center.”

Enlightenment is not a cheap trick, nor did Gurdjieff offer or advertise it as one.

If you look at Gurdjieff’s “Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson” (1950), it is about a 1,238 page-long (depending on what edition you have) doorstopper he spent years and years refining and laboriously working in and making it the best expression of his thought he could. It is not something he did easily, nor that was meant to be advertised as “easy.” In fact, he noted how important it was to make it difficult for the student or seeker so that it a real authentic desire for knowledge that comes to the fore in them. Would-be students of his were kicked out or turned away if massive character-flaws or failures happened, or some trait became evident like that they weren’t really interested in “the Work” but simply seeking occult New-Age socializing or some way to spend the time and temporarily be free from what they saw as “real life.”