Animals

   

Marlowe

March 19, 2021

In our ordinary state, we are animals who think we’re human beings. 

It would be better if we were human beings who knew we were animals.

If that were the case, we'd truly know something, because our organic conscience would then already be awakened. But our organic conscience is buried; under ordinary circumstances we have absolutely no contact with it. The ego has created a substitute conscience within the surface waters of our being, which changes with every ray of light that is reflected from it. It doesn’t absorb the light from within and use that for its work; it only takes light from outside, like a parasite, which costs us nothing and causes us to be as casual with our conscience as a drunken sailor spending his money as he goes from one bar to another. 

In this manner, our conscience gets us exactly what we want: but all we want is to be a drunkard. That is to say, we wish to serve only ourselves; and this is one of the esoteric meanings of Gurdjieff’s use of the term masturbation, which actually has nothing to do with the sexual act, even though it consistently sounds like it. Masturbation is a function of the ego, and it is a function that takes place in what we call the “conscious” state. Association has a great deal to do with masturbation, and this can be better understood from a practical (not psychological) point of view if one studies it more carefully.

Let’s change gears here for a moment and discuss the function of association. Association is very nearly random and operates at light speed. It functions in nearly exactly the same way as a computer does, that is, absolutely mechanically. It consists of the database. When any impression comes in, association automatically and instantaneously compares it to thousands, even tens of thousands or perhaps millions, of other impressions it has stored. What it connects that impression can depends on a number of factors, including what happened just beforehand, with previous impressions have the strongest correspondence, and accident. Previous impressions have the strongest influence, but accident is the predominant form of collision between an immediate impression and its predecessors. It simply a matter of random chance whether the strongest influence happens to pop up first. 

Typically, an impression brushes up against some one or two dozen previous collections of impressions in the first instant and there is always one that has a stronger influence. This is the one that the incoming impression binds to. Again, one can see this function if one has a fortunate moment of insight. Because of the speed of the process, it’s impossible to be there with it all the time; the point is that one has to have an immediate and practical experience of this question in order to understand just how random and mechanical are function of association is. From there we can begin to more strongly reject the immediate effect of associations and step back from them. To be suspicious of them. Taking one step back always allows the possibility for the contact with further material, some of which will usually be better formed than the accidental connections. The issue here, of course, lies in the fact that for most of us we have many mistakenly reinforced impressions — and the more we fall under the influence of the outside world and other people, the more we are likely to have a group of mistaken or broken impressions which reflect lies other people have constructed and fed to one another. Hence the title of my song, “Other People’s Lies.”

Let’s go back to the question of being an animal. We are not human beings. As we are, we are feral. Everything in us responds to animal desire, which is not been trained to do anything other than to get what it wants for itself. A human being begins this way as a child. There is a touching innocence to that state, because it is a rightful state from nature’s point of view and each animal inhabits it without prejudice and according to law. However, because of the intellect, human beings inhabit the state with increasing prejudice in every moment that they exist; and this deviates more and more from any lawful infestation other than the law of egostic selfishness, which is really a kind of summary “anti-– law” belonging to the set of 24 laws that manifest themselves as oppositional law on this level.

So we aren’t even animals. We are animals who have run wild from the state of being animal and substituted it with a different, more malevolent state that cares only about itself, in an intellectual way that permits it to do intentional harm to others, including other humans, all animals, plants, the environment, and the planet itself. Animals are capable of such action. We dream we are human beings but we are not even close to that state as we are. A human being suffers the consequences of their actions from within through the force of a properly matured conscience; and this puts a moral constraint on them far more powerful than any exterior force could create. Yet in our dreams, because we have convinced ourselves that we are “human beings,” we excuse anything we do without care.

The human being who knows they are an animal has developed a respect for that half of their being; and it changes the way we are in relationship both with ourselves and the world.

A human being begins to understand how to suffer.

 May you be well within today.

Lee

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.