Theos-Talk Archives (September 1994 Message tl00051)

Nancy,

Following along your thought that the verbal part of the brain
"makes up something that has logical consistency and sounds good"
it seems to me that we do that a lot.

> We are constantly receiving intuitive, emotional, and psychic
> information which is outside our arena of awareness.  We then
> rationalize AFTER THE FACT in order to make sense of the
> information.  For example, I feel bad because ...  or I called
> you today because...  or I just thought I'd buy this because ...
> and try to logically explain away (and so don't try to notice)
> the immense amount of non-rational info we receive.  We live in
> an organic non-linear Universe but my rational mind keeps wanting
> to make logical and sequential sense of it, so I/we are often
> too willing to explain away the magic.

Gurdjieff refers to this phenomenon as "lying", i.e.  the
tendency of human beings to draw conclusions about events and the
world at large on the basis of manifestly insufficient evidence
and to convince ourselves that we actually do understand these
things.  I would only add that not only do we try to explain the
"immense amount of non-rational info we receive" but especially
the internal contradictions within our own psychic apparatus, as
we must appear to ourselves to be rational, self-consistent
mental beings exercising perfect voluntary control over our
thought processes at all times.

> Re the Witness as Atman.  I understand Atman to be a universal
> principle.  What do you think about it being the Atman of
> Manas?

My understanding is that the Witness refers to Atman, which as
you correctly point out, is a universal principle, equivalent to
Brahman.  Hence Marcus Aurelius's often quoted statement "The
mystic is the spy of God".

Peace,
Frank