We Are All Asleep

 Though what follows is far from a perfect summary it transmits the most important concept I learned from Gurdjieff by recently reading "In Search of the Miraculous," pretty well. It is of course best to read the book for yourself but be warned its a challenging read.

 People don't do evil things for the sake of evil. At best when they do evil things they do them for what they perceive to be a good reason which is lunacy and worse more often they do evil things without thinking at all.

  This is a law and it extends well beyond what is perceived as evil actions. Most of the time we do everything without thinking. That is we do things without intention and without
a definitive aim.

  Our moving center which for the sake of explanation we shall call our learned instincts (They are not strictly speaking instincts because they were not born in us but they are learned and we perform them unconsciously like instincts) controls our movements,our actions,even our speech and all the time we are lost in our mind thinking about this and that or more often dreaming about something pleasant or agonizing over an imagined nightmare. We do not DO anything really things just HAPPEN and we REACT unconsciously.

  This is a SLEEP and its epidemic,it effects all of us. It makes us machines.

  To be AWAKE,to be truly HUMAN we must learn to know ourselves always. To remember what we are doing,what we are saying, what we are thinking,what is actually going on inside and all around us in this moment. If we can learn to do that we can truly change ourselves and conquer the world!

  "He who knows others is wise; He who knows himself is enlightened!"
-Lao Tzu