Course "Talks on Esoteric"

Book I "Metaphysics. Fundamentals of esoteric philosophy. Universal principles of cosmic and worldly existence."

Book I
"Metaphysics. Fundamentals of esoteric philosophy. Universal principles of cosmic and worldly existence."

TALK   ONE

TALK ONE
In this book I want you to meet ancient knowledge which will expain very many aspects of life that are mysterious for modern culture.
Meet with Absolute, universal, cosmic Laws of existence. These laws are directly related to the worldly life, so they directly concern everyone, Unfortunately our civilization has tiny knowledge of real life as yet. Our culture knows nothing about the dependence of worldly life from the energetic influence of the planets of the small cosmos, i.e. the planets of the solar system. It knows nothing about the Laws and principles of the universal ecumenical existence; it knows nothing of the connection of the worldly life with the life of finer worlds, the astral and spiritual ones.
“Humanity and all the organic life on the Earth undergo influences coming from different sources and different worlds – that of the Moon, planets, the Sun and stars. All these influences act simultaneously. But at the present moment one prevails, at the next – another.
G.Gurdjiyev

But it isn’t absolutely taken into consideration by the modern culture either in the description of man or in the explanation of public life peculiarities.
Both society and an individual follow wrong conceptual of life. All the public and private life is based on na?ve, imaginary conceptions about life and death. These conceptions have nothing in common with reality. It is a lie that a person lives but once. The truth is he lives infinitely many times. It’s a lie that life is a process which is chaotic, incidental, depending on casual circumstances, the will of surrounding people or the will of the so-called god. The truth is there is nothing casual in man’s life. Beginning with the moment of birth and finishing with death the life of man is a cyclic process, which is going on in accordance with the Universal laws of existence, the law of cause and effect among them. Everything has its cause, and everything will inevitably lead to lawful consequences. The reasons of all events of our life lie in the qualities of our personality. Our fate is just the consequence of our character. Man uselessly spends his time given him for his development not knowing that man’s life is an educational process and the basic task of everybody is the development and perfection of his own personality.
Without any true conceptions of what he is doing here on the earth, man puts wrong aims before himself, e.g. to get rich, gain power, acquire many things; he spends too much meaningless efforts to gain it; he suffers much. Suffering, difficulties, overcoming, struggle are not the essence of worldly life; it’s the consequence of human ignorance concerning the sense of life. Man knows nothing about the Laws of Life, his true set-up, the sense of man’s being in this world, his true being in other worlds, All this leads to endless, meaningless fuss, struggle with surrounding people and finally to uselessness of that short time which we call “life”. Man is mainly glad about trifles; much more does he suffer, struggle, overcomes the resistance of surrounding people and then leaves this world – enfeebled, empty, without understanding what and why was going on in his life. “All is vanity of vanities, said one of ancient wise men. One should change his viewpoint on many things, acquire quite different notions of life and death, the Universe and man so that life did not consist only of petty fuss, struggle and suffering; so that it became a realized, creative joyous process.
It is necessary to find out what man is. Is he a material body which appeared in this world by chance and exists rather unconsciously in this irrepressible stream which we call “life”? Or is he a small particle of universal existence, a particle of the Universe’s life and at the same time a part of nature of the planet Earth? A part of human community and a part of universal life?
What is this quickly passing period of time from the moment of birth till the moment of death?
What sense is in those events which fill this period of time? And what is after this life?
Man must stop being a splinter which is carried by a stream of life from one event to another. He must learn to understand the sense of each event, to stop na?ve thinking that life is a set of chances, Of course not. Everything is not by chance. Everything has a deep sense, everything has its reason and everything that is happening with us in life will have its result. It is necessary to know quite well what is happening after worldly life and why. Everything in our life has a deep sense. But which? For the mass of present–day people this sense is not clear at all. But for a thinking man it’s enough to ask himself: “Is life given to us so that I bustled, struggled, suffered, envied, overcame the resistance of the surrounding people and finally left this world without understanding why it had happened to me?”
The man of the future will know exactly that he is a particle of life of the Universe; so he inevitably submits to the general universal laws. He will know exactly that the sense of his staying on the earth is the development of consciousness, that he develops it in the conditions of the planet Earth’s nature, in interaction with other people and that is the main sense of his life.
If one looks attentively at the life of nature, the life of the planet’s society, it becomes completely clear that the main sense of existence is development. The development of life is the sense of ecumenical existence.
“People living in the Earth can belong to very different levels though outwardly they are very much alike”.
G.Gurdjiyev
Now more and more people feel by intuition that this hidden meaning of life exists. It’s not by chance that many people in our country read esoteric literature; some turned to church; some make up different fantastic theories about aliens, everyday contacts with Higher Reason. In our country there are especially many “clairvoyants”, contactors, wizards, masters of secret societies, “inhabitants” of Orion and many, many others. This is the result of those deep processes, which are going on in our society. This is the presentiment of the existence of some truth, which must come to being for many, the forefeeling of the fact, that those conceptions on which modern culture is being built must be replaced with others, And this feeling is quite right. The epoch of Pisces, which has been lasting on the Earth for 2 thousand years, is coming to its end. It’s the Christian era. We are on the threshold of the next epoch, the epoch of Aquarius, which will also last for 2.2 thousand years. The culture which has created its knowledge, beliefs, cults, traditions, must retire into the past.
The retiring epoch is characterized by wars, change of life forms. The humanity survived the slave – owning, feudal, capitalistic social systems and came to the ideas of social justice.
For the past 2 thousand years the humanity has changed its notions of the world more than once. For 1.5 thousand years it was religious world – outlook. In accordance with it two “Persons” – God and Satan rule the life of man and society. Earth is the centre of the Universe. All the Universe is the Solar system. Everything on the Earth is performed by the will of these supreme spirits.
For the whole six centuries the basic worldly outlook has been materialistic. According to it life is a single phenomenon the result of occasional clustering of material particles. There are not any laws governing existence but blind laws of nature. The life of the society and that of a personality depend on chance circumstances. Man’s will decides everything. Both outlooks have too restricted notions of life, that are far from the true ones. Now the humanity has approached the border, when new notions about the essence of life must come into being. It is natural and inevitable. The consciousness of the human society is analogous to that of man. Man grows and his notion of life changes. This way it happens with the human society as well. If it were not so, the humanity would not develop. Not so long ago our society was one whole in its notion of life. This notion was materialistic. Now it’s fashionable to be a religious man or an esoteric. Much literature on these themes is sold. But the relation to both religious and esoteric philosophy is often superficial and unrealized. It’s very fashionable to remember Lord on any occasion. Many people think that by this they claim their spirituality. It is enough to remember God sometimes in fact without changing anything in one’s existence. Our society is literally stuck in pharisaism. So many believers and so much hatred and malice.
I want to draw your attention to the problems of esoteric knowledge. Ancient knowledge, in most cases perceived in a chaotic way, without any system, through ignorant interpretators, is often distorted or just falsified. A great amount of profanation, distortions, sincere pot-boilers on the theme of esoteric knowledge is characteristic of our time.
“A heap of unverified and not submitting to verification statements and dense, cloying, sticky porridge of sentimental humanism – such is the mixture that numerous esoteric books consist of; it’s just because of them one is ashamed to bear the name of an esoteric.”
Dion Fortune.

But I think it’s a temporary pnenomenon. In future there will inevitably the necessity in genuine knowledge of life. This knowledge is very exact and concrete. Here exists quite an exact terminology, exact notions, here absolute scientific logic is necessary.
This science does not allow any conjectures, fantasies, ignorant distortions.
Sinse ancient times the knowledge of the Laws of Life has existed on the Earth. They were called dedicatory. They were conveyed to but a few in special closed schools. They can’t be obtained while reading odd literature on esoteric themes. One should obtain a system of knowledge. It must enter deeply into the consciousness of a person; then cognition or his own knowledge of personality will arise – he will call it truth. Then convictions governing the life of a person will come into being. This achieved knowledge completely changes the attitude of a person to life, to himself, to surrounding people. For instance the information of the fact that man lives but once, taken as truth, creates a definite attitude of man to life, associates, death. Another viewpoint – that man lives an endless number of lives, in fact he is immortal, - taken as truth, will completely change his attitude to his associates, circumstances of his life and death. Information taken from odd books giving no complete world – outlook is dead knowledge, for it hasn’t become leading in your life, your own knowledge. It’s borrowed information. It doesn’t stay in your mind, it is very quickly forgotten and it in no way influences upon your personality, it doesn’t correct man’s attitude towards life. Information stays as it is, life stays as it is. Nobody needs knowledge for the sake of knowledge, information read in books, if it doesn’t correlate with your life, explain it, teach another attitude to it.
“The knowledge of recurrence of lives adds nothing to man, if he doesn’t see that everything recurs in this life, if he doesn’t struggle to change himself to avoid recurrence. But if he changes in himself something existing, i.e. of he achieves something, this achievement can’t be lost. For everything there are exists definite time, definite term. Possibilities for everything exist only during definite term.”
G.Gurdjiyev.
Worldly life is that definite term for every man when he can change much in himself, pass to another level of development, if he lives consciously, if he knows what his life is given to him for.
“The inner growth, the change of existence wholly depend on the work man must do on himself.”
G.Gurdjiev
To desire to live consciously, change something in himself man must get true knowledge of the laws, dependence of his fate from the qualities of his personality, of the fact that life completely passes into the hands of man the process of self creation and creation of his fate. That there is nobody more responsible to you for your qualities and fate than you are.
Knowledge is much more accessible for those who can master it, than people thing, The whole trouble is people do not desire knowledge or cannot accept it.
Cognition as obtained knowledge enters our consciousness, becomes its part, begins to change your personality. People of the East often call esotery “direct way”, because esoteric knowledge is not information for securing personal erudition. This knowledge becomes the basic foundation for life. So, for example, the basic foundation for a modern man of the western civilization is the unexamined information about one time worldly life. On the basic of this notion the whole life is being structured. But if another basic idea arises, other scientific notions, another art, medicine, pedagogy will inevitably come into being.
The most important task of the esoteric knowledge is to destroy illusionary, false notions of Man about himself and life. Truth is accepted only by a soul which is ripe, ready for its acception.
Having got new knowledge of life, man begins to feel his constant connection with all living things. He begins to understand that there is nothing dead and inanimate in nature. In its way everything is alive and conscious, everything is rational. But consciousness and reason on all stages of existence show themselves differently. All the matter which we know is alive and in its way it’s reasonable.
The esoteric ideas, i.e. ideas of objective knowledge, are different from subjective scientific and philosophic ideas.
One of the central ideas of objective knowledge is the idea of the universal unity, the unity in variety. The notion of the world split into a million separate phenomena unconnected with each other is characteristic of the modern “subjective”, i.e. scientific knowledge. The reality of life is intercommunication and interdependence.
Everything influences us – the energies of the nearest planets of the solar system, the energies of the people surrounding us, the energetic influence of nature, animals, the energies of towns, buildings. We with our energies influence everything. You will understand that life in all its endless variety is regulated, submitted to Single Laws. Knowledge will help you understand that everything in your life and the life of society occurs according to the Universal Laws. True knowledge always turns the reason of a philistine busy with solving petty momentary problems into the reason of a wise man seeing the same problems in a different light, i.e. as regularity, not as chance. Such a man doesn’t consider only the present moment of life, but always feels connected with three lives – the past one, from which modern circumstances arise, the present and the future ones, in which his steps, conclusions and decisions will show themselves. Knowledge will help you change you notion of yourself and the surrounding world. It will give you a deeper and true understanding of life your own, social, your associates. In other words knowledge will help you realize the true aim of your coming to this world, the reasons and sense of all suffering and joys, which are a part of your fate. It’s necessary to learn to understand and accept all surrounding and all associates – first of all your life.
The egoistic demand to satisfy only his own needs and wishes, the desire to alter associates in accordance with his demands is a characteristic attitude to life, to associates of a modern man. It always inevitably leads to conflicts, struggle, resistance of those, whom one wants to change. Our associates are the same ignorant egoists and that is why they treat us in the same way.
If a man begins to understand that his every associate is not a chance person, that relations with him are formed owing to karma reasons or to the qualities of the man himself, he can transform his egoism, change much in himself. Then inevitable conflicts, struggle will disappear from his life and his life will turn into harmonious existence without conflicts and sufferings.
The aim of the development of a personality is to learn to live without suffering and without making others suffer. To take everything to heart. This is the spiritual existence Jesus spoke about, when he demanded active mercy, but not attendance of churches. Only when we stop treating associates rationally and egoistically, there will arise taking to heart, charity, possibility to receive anyone.
It’s not so easy to leave the limits of the rational, egoistic, judging reason; it’s not easy to learn to live understanding and accepting the whole environment, but this is what is means to live harmoniously, i.e. spiritually. A spiritual personality is not the one who carries a cross, mutters prayers in any case, confesses and demeans himself before a sinful preacher. The ability to understand and forgive, wisdom and self-respect are the signs of a harmonious being. We know that we must love our neighbors, but how? The ability to love the surrounding world does not arise with the increase of the amount of read literature and as the result of church attendance. It is the consequence of a very high level of consciousness.
Only when a man has reached that highest state of consciousness, which manifests itself as wisdom, ability to love and understand, he becomes harmonious and lives in full unity with the surrounding world. The aim of all dedicatory schools, whenever they existed, is to teach a man to live in harmony with nature, to feel a part of it, to teach a man to live in harmony with the human society. Jesus said about himself: “I am the Son of Man”.
This is the manifestation of that high consciousness, when a man doesn’t refer himself to any separate people, but to the whole of humanity.
In other words, a man must perceive himself as a triple being – a part of ecumenical life, nature’s life and humanity. What is a part of ecumenical life? A man lives not only in the physical world of the planet Earth, but after death in this world he lives in the fine (astral) world of our planet without staying in the spiritual world for long.
The aim of all dedicatory schools is to teach a man the harmony of existence, to teach him to perceive himself as a part the surrounding world.
Telling about invisible worlds, Laws of Cosmos, esoteric philosophy does it with the only aim – to show what inevitable bond there is between the level of development of man and his life conditions on the Earth. To learn to live harmoniously, i.e. to become charitable and wise, to stop suffering and no to cause sufferings to others, man should learn very much new, understand, reevaluate and, the main thing, learn to think differently. All the obstacles to harmony are in our mind.
Restricted, orthodox notions, both materialistic and religious, ply us from all sides. There is a habitual track, which a human mind follows. You accustomed to think in the way that the surroundings inspire you.
“Getting to know himself, a man sees that he has nothing of his own. Everything that he considered his own – viewpoints, thoughts, convictions, tastes, habits, delusions, vices – all that had formed through imitation or was taken as ready – made.”
G.Gurdjiyev

Old, conventional notions of life, both materialistic and religious, are an obstacle to a more happy and harmonious life, because they falsely explain life itself, falsely treat the aim of man’s life and absolutely falsely speak about death.
Having got such false basic ideas, man builds his life, his relations with associates in direct accordance with those ideas that exist is his reason. Man is the reflection of his consciousness, His attitude to surroundings is the same as his consciousness.
False, limited ideas, both scientific and religious, form distorted relations between people. The knowledge you’ll become familiar has the aim to create in your reason a definite systematic world outlook; in the result there must arise a new attitude to life.
Knowledge must become an instrument for more perfect and wise existence.