Location for February meetings: Mid-County Branch (small meeting room) St. Louis County Library 7821 Maryland St. Louis, MO 63105
7:00 - 9:00 p.m. both evenings
Admission free and open to public
February 14, 2012 The Practice of Awareness and Self Observation
"In most traditions, it is said in diverse ways
that the Truth is beyond, or within, the world of appearances and that the vision of that Truth liberates man from
uncertainty, doubt and conflict. But we certainly feel that before being able to see the inner truth of the
world we take part in, the truth about ourselves, it is first of all necessary to resolve these doubts
and inner conflicts: we have to begin by learning to turn toward ourselves and to look into
ourselves."
--Jean Vaysse
February 28, 2012 Sleep and Awakening
"There is nothing new in the idea of sleep. People
have been told almost since the creation of the world that they are
asleep and that they must awaken. How many times is this said in the
Gospels, for instance? 'Awake', 'watch', 'sleep not'."
--G.I. Gurdjieff
"Whenever a man awakes, he awakes from the false assumption that he has always been awake, and therefore the master of his thoughts, feelings and actions."
--Henri Tracol
"So, for the present, let us stay with the first thing that Gurdjieff asks of us—something that is always available to us in our daily life, whether in New York, Paris or Mexico. He asks us to try to 'remember ourselves,' to awaken to ourselves here in our life as it is now. What does this mean? What is this 'self' which it is necessary to remember? What is this 'myself' which needs to enter into my life?" --Pauline de Dampierre
March 13, 2012 Inner Development
"The point is to reestablish what has been lost, not to acquire anything new. This is the purpose of development. For this one must learn to discriminate between essence and personality, and to separate them. When you have learned to do this you will see what to change and how."
--G.I. Gurdjieff
I would say that this wish to discover the truth may be a part of ourselves that can turn toward inner development. You can't say that it is the true spiritual part, any more than you could say that in other cultures the impulse toward belief or unconditional devotion was of itself necessarily the spiritual part. But it can be turned toward an acknowledgment—a practical acknowledgment, through experience—of a higher dimension. --Pauline de Dampierre
March 27, 2012 A View of the Structure of Man
'"A very ancient knowledge which Gurdjieff makes use of considers that our everyday life is provided for by five functions, each of which has its own 'center' or 'brain' in which the vital energy takes its appropriate form and in which the use of this energy is controlled in daily life."
