The Practice of Awareness of Reality-I

     One learns this practice from someone else. I learned from Willem Nyland, who was a long-time student and disciple of the famous and somewhat notorious G.I. Gurdjieff. Mr Nyland called this practice Gurdjieff Work or Work on oneself. As you see, I am calling it something different. The practice that I am discussing here is the same that I learned from Mr. Nyland. Perhaps I should call it "Nyland Work," except that I don't want to cause Mr. Nyland to roll over in his grave. 

     I have definite reasons for calling this practice by this new name. I don't think that associating it with the personality of Mr. Gurdjieff or his mostly self-proclaimed disciples is helpful, and it is actually misleading. This practice is about your real life and about the reality and truth of existence. It has nothing to do with glorification or denigration of any personality whatsoever. All practices represent some form of "work on oneself." This one represents a particular kind of work, work on your own consciousness. The means by which one works is by practicing awareness of reality. The trouble with our consciousness is that we are NOT simultaneously and impartially aware of reality. You can work on your consciousness until you die, but unless your work is guided by actual awareness of reality, you will simply be transforming stupidity into stupidity. I believe that we will awaken when we die. I would prefer not to awaken to the realization that I have spent my life wandering in a house of mirrors. Mr. Nyland used to tell an anecdote of the philosopher on his deathbed. "Nur Eine.." he murmurs. Only one, that is, himself, has truly understood his philosophy. Suddenly he sits up. "Nein, Keine," and dies. No, he hasn't understood it either.

     At a certain point, back in 1970, I understood what this practice was about. At that point there was a powerful magnetic attraction. I was drawn to it, and I stuck, and have remained attached to this practice. It isn't the personality of Mr. Gurdjieff to which I became attached, not the society of his followers, nor his ideas.

     Jesus advised people to "build your house on a rock." Reality is the foundation of our existence, but we do not know reality. We know our thinking. As it happened, various past experiences, including traits of my individuality and the way I was brought up, the kind of family that we had and our local culture, had given me a precocious appreciation of the inadequacy of our thinking as a guide for living. I understood this both theoretically and by painful experience of my own stupidity,  despite my "brightness," education and the seriousness of my need to figure out my life. All my thinking wasn't helping me very much, and I already knew enough, for example about politics, philosophy, psychology and religion, to doubt whether any amount of understanding and experimentation with other people's ideas was going to make much difference. I had already experimented with ideas a great deal.

     Many people don't understand this: we are all philosophers, psychologists, and theologians. Culture embodies ideas about what reality is. We learn these ideas from infancy, and we are hypnotized by them. We take these stories for reality.

     I cannot neglect to mention that I had also had some profound experiences with L.S.D. It is undoubtedly very difficult for a person to appreciate the obvious necessity of a radical shift in our consciousness, who has never personally experienced a radical shift in one's consciousness. L.S.D. proved to me for sure that an entirely different kind of consciousness is possible for a person, such as me. Moreover, it was evident that in true openness to life as we actually experience life, our familiar world, the world of our cultural stories, the world that we know so well and may be sick to death of, would vanish like a dream,  to be replaced by reality in its infinite, sacred vitality. Obviously frequent or prolonged dosing with L.S.D. not only has "diminishing returns," but also can and does produce various harmful side effects. Some people have experienced harmful side effects from even one experience with it.  After discovering this practice, I had no further use for L.S.D.

     My response to this practice, when I actually understood what these people were talking about, was: "this is it." Sometimes I have compared it in my imagination to the reaction of the shepherds who, reportedly, witnessed angels singing near a stable in Bethlehem. A new reality has been revealed, and you act accordingly, of course. "Uh, I'm kinda tired tonight, maybe tomorrow." No, when the angels sing, you get up now.

     As it happened, the potential value of this practice, the promise of it, was very obvious to me back in 1970. For various reasons, some of which I understand, it doesn't seem so obvious to many other people. They don't hear the angels singing. But this intuition or conviction really isn't required. The point is to try to experience awareness of reality. You can try this experiment without having the conviction that your life depends on it.

     Obviously everyone has one's own understanding of this and everything else. To me, it seems that many people, even some long-time followers of nominally the same practice, are more or less muddled in their sense of just what the trouble with our consciousness is. In the extreme case, which is most common, one imagines that the state of our consciousness is fine, so long as we are "oriented," not too psychotic, and have vestiges of memory. To quote Professor Pangloss, "This is the best of all possible worlds.." Oh yes, just look how clever we are.

     If we- those of us who actually reach the point of trying this practice- experienced full-blown, enduring awareness of reality as an immediate result of our efforts, these differences in understanding wouldn't be important, but this is not the case. One has to work correctly and persistently to experience awareness reliably. It takes time to learn this dexterity. In order to experience awareness that endures, one has to work continuously. It takes even more time to learn that dexterity, and even when one begins to acquire the skill, there is still the need for the will, and where does the will come from? It comes from a clear understanding of the necessity for awareness of reality in my life. So I am trying to emphasize that necessity in presenting this practice for your consideration and experimentation. It is what this is about and why this practice exists.

     Ideas are cheap, and there is an infinite variety of them. They all lead us down some path of imagination, and lead us to focus our attention in some partial way. People believe in all kinds of things. Now we have the Internet, available to the masses. Everyone has access to ideas from all over the world, of interest to and believed in by someone, probably by millions of people, since there are several thousands of millions of us cavorting on this patient planet of ours.

     All philosophies and all religions encourage us to adopt certain ideas and beliefs. They all have their selling points and their weaknesses. This is true of all religions, also atheism and agnosticism. "You pays your money-that is, your attention- and you takes your choice." There was a song popular in the late Sixties, sung by Peggy Lee:

              "Is that all there is?

                Is that all there is?

                If that's all there is, my friend, then let's keep dancing.

                Let's break out the booze, and have a ball,

                If that's all there is."

     If the kind of consciousness that we have is all there is. There are serious problems with the state of our consciousness. We are unaware of what we are and what we need, and we focus our attention in stupid ways that bring suffering to us and others. Of course we want change, but a change in politics, philosophy or religion isn't going to change the basic fact that we are stupid! A change in our consciousness is necessary, not just a change in belief or ideas.

     We don't think about our consciousness. We don't criticize our consciousness. Obviously, we need some guidance in that, since we are our consciousness. We really aren't our bodies. Our bodies are objects. We are our experience. One trouble with the kind of consciousness that we have is that we are susceptible to believing in nonsense. If we did not have consciousness, none of our experience would exist. Human life would not exist. Robotic activities of bodies do not constitute human life, although of course our experience is the experience of having a human body. 

     It is only possible to criticize our consciousness fairly and justly from the standpoint of impartial and simultaneous awareness of reality. Mr. Nyland liked to use the term "objective" as opposed to our usual subjective consciousness. It was really somewhat confusing. Of course our consciousness is subjective, and it will always be subjective. We are the objects who are also subjects. The idea that I could be genuinely objective toward anything, anyone or the universe is absurd. I am in relation with all that is. But if I can experience impartial, simultaneous awareness, that awareness is objective toward my own consciousness. This kind of objectivity is possible for a person. We don't have it, but we need it.