Truth, error, and us

Tuesday, September 27, 2022

I have been re-reading our study of the Gospel of Thomas, beginning in May, 2019, and yesterday I was moved to say, “I’m finding it very interesting. In fact, it’s pretty impressive. Did all that come through my pen? I hope it is not all illusion and delusion.” But I also picked up Ouspensky’s In Search of the Miraculous, re-reading of Gurdjieff telling Ouspensky how things are, and said, “I despair of actually accomplishing anything. Everything I have brought through may be wrong, and how would I know.”

At 3:15 a.m. I wrote:

Perhaps my inability to reach more extended ranges of consciousness ought to argue for doing the Discovery program again. Yet if there was no permanent gain before, why should I think to win something permanent now? And if nothing permanent, why bother?

By the same token, why bother with anything? To get through the day, I suppose.

I find myself in an attitude of prayer, and I realize, I’m in the same position as George Washington at Valley Forge, or Abraham Lincoln so often during his presidency, at a loss as to where help is going to come from, at a loss as to what to do or how to do it. Their struggle involved an entire country, mine only me, but it is the same struggle. They came through it, I can come through it, but I wish I had their strength of character.

So then, after I awoke again:

8:15 a.m. John Anthony West, is that you knocking at the door? I’m reading In Search of the Miraculous. And slowly, and a chain of associations – not a very long one – puts you in my mind. Is it true, or just a stray thought?

You remember my abrasiveness and assertiveness. You could do with a touch of them.

The connection between us was your obvious and incontrovertible contempt for modern so-called civilization, its clear decline.

It becomes blindingly obvious as you look at it, does it not?

Long ago already.

You could bring it out. I would have said “you need to,” but you changed it.

I did. Sorry. It can be slippery, this process.

Plus you don’t like people telling you that you “need to” do anything.

True.

You are agonizing over the possibility that everything you have been doing for 22 years and more is a mistake, is a misdirection, is leading you and those who follow you into a swamp. But you forget, it isn’t up to you. Consider: sparks, not persuasion. Interconnectedness. Higher selves, etc. What you might call divine protection, or anyway providence. You don’t necessarily know what you do, why you do it, what effect it has, or on whom. You do the best you can.

Well you certainly did. I loved your Serpent in the Sky. And I loved your attitude in general. It’s too bad that the only time I might have talked to you, I was so sick, in Ohio that time.

Nothing by chance, you know that.

I do.

That’s mostly what I dropped in for, a word of timely encouragement. Colin and others join in; we’re all in this together. And yes, you might contact Ouspensky or Gurdjieff directly, but would you and they be on the same wave-length?

Somehow, I doubt it.

Then stay at whatever level is most comfortable. After all, if you can hang out with Carl Jung, that’s not exactly at the beginner’s level, is it?

No, that’s true. And I wonder, would G or O have considered (did they consider) Jung to be less than they? On a dead-end path? Whatever?

Try to keep real in your mind that nothing is fixed, no matter how the 3D evidence points. They are as alive as I am, and I am as alive as you.

So I shouldn’t let myself become intimidated by what others – even great others – have left behind.

You came to do your work. What advantage is it to assume that it’s all a snare and a delusion? Maybe it is, and in that case you need to find something realer. But maybe it isn’t, and doubt is distraction.

I wish I could know.

You can’t ever know, but you can intend. Unbending intent cannot come to nothing. Whatever it do or do not achieve in the external world, it works its transformation in you, which is realer than the shared subjectivity.

I’d give something to know what Dr. Jung would have thought of all I have been given. Yes, I hear it: “Ask.” Nothing to lose, I guess. Dr. Jung, a word?

I told you first off, don’t be intimidated by the authority of others. I might have added, that authority is always in your mind; it is your acceptance or rejection of claims that you can never judge on any evidence but whether or not the results resonate within you. Kant, Schopenhauer, hundreds of philosophers you will have heard of and probably not read, and if read not studied, and if studied not necessarily understood: They all produced their truth, and each of those truths are true for some and are untrue for others.

Now, listen, here. I do not say, “seem” untrue to one or another; I say “are” untrue. Truth and untruth are not objects, but the result of ratios. On one side of the equation is the individual (you, in this case) and on the far side is the way of seeing things. The sign that completes the equation connecting the two may be positive or negative, and it may – very probably will – change over time, so that what was once seen as true is seen as false, and what was once clearly false is seen as true.

Or, to put that more carefully: Everything contains truth and error, but which is evident, which is predominant, depends upon the angle from which it is approached. Every individual exists at a certain point, stands at a certain place, one could say. From that place, only certain angles of vision are possible. One may see a narrow range or a wider one, but no one sees from all directions. Hence, only certain angles of vision are open to any given point, any given individual life.

But your life may change you; you may will it or it may change around you; either way, you find yourself at a different point. From there, things look different. What is true, what is error, may be unrecognizably different, or slightly different, but there will be some change. This is a different situation from what is commonly supposed. Therefore, what is true for Gurdjieff may not be true for you, or may be partly true, or may be false but provocative. Understand, no one’s truth should make you doubt your own.

I’m getting that this is stronger than your saying, “Don’t be discouraged by seeing things differently from people you feel know things.”

That would be a very mild version of what I have to say. More like, “It is your responsibility to develop your thought, your sight, your version of reality, and not just accede to someone else’s.” Only you can do that. If you do not, no one can. This is true of everyone, of course, but you are responsible for you, not them.

And if some or all of what I bring forth is wrong?

Did you hear me when I said right and wrong are operators, not terms of an equation? Even if everything you said was “wrong” – and how could that be, if you are operating from integrity? – how do you know what it will spark in someone else needing exactly that nudge? Do you suppose I had any idea who would make what out of what I spoke and wrote?

I wasn’t going to publish any of this, but I think I will.

Others have their struggles.

Yes. All right, I thank you – and John – for this. It does help.