How can one be sure that
the Earth changes of the Cayce readings will occur? And are all of
those changes that have been predicted inevitable? These are big
questions. We have one indication as to the answers from a Cayce
reading. And we have other indications from the esoteric body of
knowledge known as the Gurdjieff-Ouspensky system.
Note that an early work of P.D. Ouspensky was recommended to a few
requesters of Cayce readings to help them understand such concepts as
the nature of time. And one reading (900-88) volunteered the
following
information about Ouspensky.
...Ouspensky...was
the sage of the
mountain in the third generation of the peoples of the Mahabbs in Tibet
-- 1777 -- seventh month -- seventh day --seventh hour -- Mahaba Tarhl
and the keeper of the records in the mount.
We
begin by considering the "Table of Times and
Cosmoses," as presented
by Rodney Collin in his The Theory of Celestial Influence (1954,
Vincent Stuart, London, Appendix 2). Mr. Collin had been a
student of
Ouspensky for several years. Collin's table (see below) is based
on a
chain or
hierarchy of cosmoses, each made in the same image, each formed by
infinite repetition of a smaller one, each an infinitesimal particle of
a larger one. Man himself -- a single individual man -- is the
midmost
of these cosmoses. Within him lie electron, molecule and
cell. Beyond
him lie Nature, Earth, Sun, and Galaxy. Each of these components
has a
lifetime of the same length.
One realizes that the last assertion is hard to accept without more
detail from Collin's book. I mention it merely because it is the
basis
for the following discourse by Maurice Nicoll in volume 1 of his Psychological
Commentaries on the Teaching of G.I. Gurdjieff and P. D. Ouspensky
(1970, Stuart and Katkins, London).
Here's what Nicholl, who was a psychiatrist and student of Jung,
Gurdjieff, and
later Ouspensky, had to say about two great conceptions of Man -- how
mankind in general is held back in its evolution for planetary reasons
and how at the same time there is a way open for those individuals who
desire to awaken.
Two
kinds of
evolution are possible for Man.
Man finds himself situated on a Being called the Earth whose period of
evolution is very vast in comparison with Man's life. Before the Earth
evolves to the state of the Sun, many millions of years of our time
must pass. To the Earth it is merely its lifetime. The Earth may
however fail to evolve, in which case it is broken up-into a mass of
small fragments that revolve round the Sun as minute "planets" or
"asteroids". There are many of these between Mars and Jupiter.
Now the evolution of the Earth is held back by the evolution of its
Moon. You must understand that the idea of a planet evolving is a
Work-idea. It is not found in science. It alters our whole notion of
the Universe. The period of time necessary according to the
Work-teaching for a planet to evolve is something of the order of
eighty thousand million years of Man's time. I will remind you of the Table
of Times. To the planet itself it is a period of eighty years on
the scale of its time.
Since the Earth is in close relation to its Moon, the evolution of the
former is held back by the state of the latter. Actually influences --
vibrations and very fine matters -- continually reach the Moon from the
Earth and feed it just as the Sun feeds the Earth in a similar way. For
example, all the useless human suffering, negative emotions and
violence on Earth, feeds the Moon.
Remember that everything is made use of in the Universe. If Man were to
evolve quickly -- that is, begin to awaken -- useless suffering and
violence would cease on Earth. But it is not in the interests of the
Earth and Moon that Man should evolve independently of
them. Man's evolution must go hand in hand with their evolution. This
is only one of the two kinds of evolution possible for Man. You will
see that it demands periods of time that are so prodigious that for
practical purposes it is meaningless for us. It has no relation to our
short lives. For this reason it is said in the Work that there is no
progress in human affairs. The planets keep Man back -- keep him
asleep.
I will quote here to you a conversation that Gurdjieff (or "G.") had
with Mr. Ouspensky,
many years ago, before the latter had been shown the diagram of the Ray
of Creation. G. was giving some preliminary ideas leading up to the
great conception of the Ray of Creation.
Mr. Ouspensky reported this conversation:
Somewhere
about this time I was very much struck by a talk about the Sun, the
planets and the Moon. I do not remember how this talk began. But I
remember that G. drew a small diagram and tried to explain what he
called the correlation
of forces in different worlds. This was in connection with the
previous talk -- that is, in connection with the influences acting upon
humanity. The idea was roughly this: humanity, or, more correctly,
organic life on earth, is acted upon simultaneously by influences
proceeding from various sources and different worlds: influences from
the planets, influences from the Moon, influences from the Sun,
influences from the stars.
All these influences act simultaneously; one influence predominates at
one moment and another influence at another moment. And for Man
there
is a certain possibility of making a choice of influences -- in other
words, of passing from one influence to another.
"To explain how would need a very long talk," said G., "so we will talk
about this some other time. At this moment I want you to understand one
thing: it is impossible to become free from one influence without
becoming subject to another. The whole thing, all work on oneself,
consists in choosing the influence to which you wish to subject
yourself, and actually falling under this influence. And for this it is
necessary to know before-hand which influence is the more profitable."
What interested me in this talk was that G. spoke of the planets and
the moon as living beings, having definite ages, a definite period of
life and possibilities of development and transition to other planes of
being. From what he said it appeared that the Moon was not a 'dead
planet', as is usually accepted, but, on the contrary, a 'planet in
birth', a planet at the very initial stages of its development which
had not yet 'reached the degree of intelligence possessed by the earth'
as he expressed it.
"But the Moon is growing
and developing," said G., "And some time, it will, possibly, attain the
same level as the Earth. Then, near it, a new moon will appear and the
Earth will become their sun. At one time the Sun was like the Earth.
And earlier still the Sun was like the Moon."
This attracted my attention at once. Nothing had ever seemed to me more
artificial, unreliable and dogmatic than all the usual theories of the
origin of planets and solar systems, from the Kant-Laplace theory down
to the very latest, with all their additions .and variations. The
'general public' considers these theories, or, at any rate, the last
one known to it, to be scientific or proven. But in actual fact there
is of course nothing less scientific and less proven than these
theories. Therefore the fact that G.'s system accepted an altogether
different theory, an organic theory having its origin in entirely new
principles and showing a different universal order, appeared to me very
interesting and important.
"In what relation does
the intelligence of the Earth stand to the intelligence of the Sun?" I
asked. "The intelligence of the
Sun is divine," said G., "But the Earth can become the same; only, of
course, it is not guaranteed and the Earth may die having attained
nothing".
"Upon what does this depend?" I asked.
G.'s answer was very
vague. "There is a definite period," he said, 'for a certain thing to
be done. If, by a certain time, what ought to be done has not been
done, the Earth may perish without having attained what it could have
attained."
"Is this period known?" I asked.
"It is known," said G., "But it would be of no advantage whatever for
people to know it. It would even be worse. Some would believe it, some
would not believe it, others would demand proofs. Afterwards they would
begin to break one another's heads. Everything ends this way."
On another
occasion, in
connection with the idea that the evolution of Man in general
is
held back by the evolution of the planets, G. was speaking of
progress. The talk was then about the latest inventions of science and
so of Man's apparent progress. G. said: "Yes, machines are making
progress, but not Man." In answer to a question whether Man had not
progressed far beyond what he used to be, even in historical time, G.
said: "It is strange how you so easily believe in this word progress.
It is as if this word hypnotized you, so that you cannot see the truth.
Man does not progress. There is no progress whatever. Everything is
just the same as it was thousands, and tens of thousands, of years ago.
It is only the outward form that changes. The essence does not change.
This is because Man remains essentially just the same.
"Civilised" and "cultured" people live with exactly the same interests
as the most ignorant savages. Modern civilisation is based on violence
and slavery, but these take different outer forms. All these fine words
about progress and civilisation are merely words. If Man is the same,
life is the same."
This
of course
produced a
particularly deep impression on us, because it was said in 1916, at the
time when the latest manifestation of "progress" and of "civilisation",
in the form of a war such as the world had not yet seen, was continuing
to grow and develop, drawing more and more millions of people into its
orbit.
I remembered that a few
days
before this talk I had seen two enormous lorries loaded to the height
of the first floors of the houses with new unpainted wooden crutches.
For some reason I was particularly struck by these lorries. In these
mountains of crutches for legs which were not yet torn off there was a
particularly cynical mockery of all the things with which people
deceive themselves. Involuntarily I imagined that similar lorries were
sure to be going about in Berlin, Paris, London, Vienna, Rome and
Constantinople. And, as a result of all this horror, all these cities,
almost all of which I knew so well and liked just because they
supplemented and gave contrast to one another, had now become hostile
both to me and to one another and separated by new walls of hatred and
crime.
I spoke about these
lorry-loads of crutches and of my thoughts about
them. "What do
you expect?" said G., "People are machines. Machines have to be blind
and unconscious; they cannot be otherwise, and all their
actions have to correspond to their nature. Everything happens. No one
does anything. "Progress" and "civilisation", in the real meaning of
these words, can appear only as the result of conscious efforts. And
only each single man can make conscious efforts. But no one wants to do
so. Progress is only possible in each single man. It cannot appear as
the result of unconscious mechanical actions. And what conscious effort
can there be in machines? And if one machine is unconscious then a
hundred machines are unconscious, and so are a thousand machines, or a
hundred thousand, or a million. And the unconscious activity of a
million machines must necessarily result in mass-destruction and mass
extermination. It is precisely in unconscious involuntary personal
manifestations that all evil begins. This is the origin of evil.
You do not yet understand and cannot imagine all the results of this
accumulation of evil, from small sources. But the time will come when
you will understand. If Man behaved consciously, all this evil would
cease. But Man is not conscious.
With this, so far as I
remember, the talk ended.
*
* *
But
apart from the evolution
of Man in terms of vast planetary time, there is another evolution
possible for him. There has always been a special teaching about Man
that has to do with this immediate evolution. The very few fragments of
Christ's teaching presented in the Gospels refer to knowledge about
this evolution. All the teaching about Man's possible inner growth and
evolution can be called esoteric teaching. Esoteric means inner.
Esoteric teaching is about inner evolution-about the inner man -- not
the outer life-side of a man. All the Work is about this possible
immediate inner evolution that is open to Man. And here lies another
great conception or idea taught by the Work, in connection with the Ray
of Creation and the side-octave from the Sun. Man is sown on Earth from
the note Sol with the possibility of inner development, and the
existence of this Work, the existence of Christ's teaching and the
existence of many other teachings, is due solely to this fact that Man
is created as an organism capable of undergoing an inner evolution,
quite apart from the evolution of the planets.
Now if you can grasp
these two great conceptions of Man -- how mankind in general is held
back for planetary reasons and how at the same time there is a way open
for those who wish to awaken, you will begin to think in terms of the {Gurdjieff- Ouspensky}Work.
So here we
see from the perspective of esoteric knowledge that the Earth is
constantly changing according to the dictates of its evolutionary development. Such
"Earth
changes" are inevitable, just as a child changes
visibly as it
moves into adolescence. This realization seems mirrored in the
following
Edgar Cayce Earth-changes reading from 1934.
(Q)
Are details of the Earth's
eruptions in 1936
so fixed that you can give me an outline of the Pacific Coast area to
be affected, along with precautionary measures to be exercised during
and after this catastrophe?
(A) All of these are, as is ever on or in such an activity,
dependent
upon individuals or groups who are in or keep an attitude respecting
the needs, the desires, the necessary requirements in such a field of
activity. That some are DUE and WILL occur is WRITTEN, as
it were,
but
- as we find - as to specific date or time in the present this may not
be given. (270-32; June 12, 1934)
And why
is it desireable to Cayce's
source for the reading that a 'specific date or time' not be
given? To refer above to what Gurdjieff said in his answer re.
the
possible advantage of knowing the period of time that the Earth might
have before being destroyed,
"It
{the time
period} is known,"
said G., "But it would be
of no advantage whatever for people to know it. It would even be worse.
Some would believe it, some would not believe it, others would demand
proofs. Afterwards they would begin to break one another's heads.
Everything ends this way."
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