Lockdown Read 1 P.D. Ouspensky was born in Moscow in 1878. His first book THE FOURTH DIMENSION (1909), offered a contribution to mathematical theory: it was TERTIUM ORGANUM (1912) and A NEW MODEL OF THE UNIVERSE (1914) which revealed his stature as a thinker and his deep preoccupation with the problems of man’s existence. Ouspensky’s search for truth brought him in 1915 to his meeting in Moscow with George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff who revealed to him a system of knowledge which Ouspensky recognised as a vital need for mankind at the present time. IN SEARCH OF THE MIRACULOUS is the record of Ouspensky’s eight years of work as Gurdjieff’s pupil. One one occasion when speaking of the orderly connectedness of everything in the universe, G. dwelt on “organic life on earth.” “To ordinary knowledge organic life is a kind of accidental appendage in the universe violating the integrity of a mechanical system. Ordinary knowledge doe not connect it with anything and draws no conclusions from the fact of its existence. But you should understand that there is nothing accidental or unnecessary in nature and that there can be nothing; everything has a definite function; everything serves a definite purpose. Thus organic life is an indispensable link in the chain of the worlds which cannot exist without it just as it cannot exist without them. It has been said before that organic life transmits planetary influences of various kinds to the earth and that it serves to feed the moon and to enable it to grow and strengthen. But the earth also is growing; not in the sense of size but in the sense of greater consciousness, greater receptivity. The planetary influences which were sufficient for her at one period of her existence become insufficient, she needs the reception of finer influences. To receive finer influences a finer, more sensitive reception apparatus is necessary. Organic life, therefore, has to evolve, to adapt itself to the needs of the planets and the earth. Likewise also the moon can be satisfied at one period with the food which is given her by organic life of a certain quality, but afterwards the time comes when she ceases to be satisfied with this food, cannot grow on it, and begins to get hungry. Organic life must be able to satisfy this hunger, otherwise it does not fulfil its function, does not answer its purpose. This means that in order to answer its purpose organic life must evolve and stand on the level of the needs of the planets, the earth, the moon.” “The evolving part of organic life is humanity. Humanity also has its eveolving part but we will speak of this later; in the meantime we will take humanity as a whole. If humanity does not evolve it means that the evolution of organic life will stop and this in turn will cause the growth of the ray of creation to stop. At the same time if humanity ceases to evolve it becomes useless from the point of view of the aims for which it was created and as such iot may be destroyed. In this way the cessation of evolution may mean the destruction of humanity.” “At the same time in examining the life of humanity was we know it historically we are bound to acknowledge that humanity is moving in a circle. In one century it destroys everything it creates in another and the progress in mechanical things of the past hundred years has proceeded at the cost of losing many things which perhaps were much more important for it. Speaking in general there is every reason to think and to assert that humanity is at a standstill and from a standstill there is a straight path to downfall and degeneration.” “Contemporary culture requires automatons. And people are undoubtedly losing their acquired habits of independence and turning into automatons, into parts of machines. It is impossible to say where is the end of all this and where the way out - or whether there is an end and a way out. One thing is certain, that man’s slavery grows and increases. Man is becoming a willing slave. He no longer needs chains. He begins to grow fond of slavery, to be proud of it. And this is the most terrible thing that can happen to a man.” P.D. OUSPENSKY ‘IN SEARCH OF THE MIRACULOUS’ (1949)
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