Know Thyself

KNOW THYSELF The revised edition of the Part One Course originally written by Leon MacLaren 1 2 In this Work each of us can only begin from where we are, and proceed by steps. The steps by which we proceed are steps in understanding. We can only bring about change in ourselves by practice. Leon MacLaren 3 4 Contents: Foreword 1. Levels of consciousness 2. Attention 3. Observation and Ego 4. Worlds 5. The Three Intelligences 6. The Higher Powers and Sex 7. Know Thyself Epilogue 5 6 Foreword Leon MacLaren was born in Glasgow on 24th September 1910. He was the son of Andrew MacLaren, a Labour MP and a staunch advocate of Henry George, the American economist. His father was a great influence on his life and Leon followed him in his economic and political aspirations. Apart from his interests in Politics, Economics and the Law, he listened to the sound of his heart to start a ‘School’, not knowing what this meant, but something “in the manner of Socrates.” As a young man of sixteen he had made the following observation: “It became very clear to me that there was such a thing as Truth and there was such a thing as Justice and that they could be found and being found, could be taught. It seemed to me that that was the most valuable thing one could pursue.” He spent the rest of his life pursuing this aim. MacLaren began by giving public lectures on Economics, and together with a group of equally inspired friends and also the help of his father, the School of Economic Science was established in 1937. He wrote a book The Nature of Society, setting out the principles which were taught in the School. The S.E.S. survived the war and kept on growing, but MacLaren felt he had done all he could in the field of Economics and began to look for a new impulse. This came in 1953 when he was introduced to Dr. Frances Roles and attended his lectures in The Study Society on the Fourth Way Teaching. The exponents of this Teaching, G.I.Gurdjieff and P.D.Ouspensky, had died in 1949 and 1947, marking the end of one era and the beginning of a new one. One of Ouspensky’s last instructions was: “To reconstruct everything from the beginning”, and knowingly or unknowingly MacLaren did just that. As soon as he was introduced to what was called ‘The System’, he commented that he was struck by the fact that the diagrams he had developed for his Economics’ course were almost identical to the ones used by Ouspensky. He subsequently wrote his Part One course based on Ouspensky’s exposition in his book In Search of the Miraculous, which would be used almost unaltered for the next thirty years. He expounded such topics as the Levels of Consciousness, the Laws of Three and Seven, the Enneagram, the Cosmic Scale, The Three Centres, and many others. He interspersed the theoretical part with many practical exercises for daily use. There is no doubt that he left an invaluable heritage by reformulating the principles of the Fourth Way Teaching in a new and comprehensible way. 7 I became Mr. MacLaren’s personal assistant in 1973 until his death, and observed from close quarters his total dedication to writing the weekly material suiting the needs of the many thousands of groups in the school worldwide. But nothing was ever quite so all-encompassing and timeless as the Part One material of the beginning. He always told us that he took great pains in writing it: “It was quite a business producing that course. It was not easy. It had to be right of course, and it cost me the whole of Saturday, and the whole of Sunday and the whole of Sunday night every week.” It is therefore my intention to preserve MacLaren’s work. It was originally a set of twelve lectures for a course of twelve weeks and I have now abridged it to a third of its size in order to make it more accessible. I have also added more practices based on the original text, which will help the aspirant to better understand the meaning in practice. One important factor that has to be mentioned is what MacLaren called: The Exercise. It was an exercise spelt out in full, which the students had to practice a few times every day, and which they were asked to report on the next week. It took central place in the weekly readings of the material and I have therefore quoted it at the head of every new section, as a reminder that this is a Teaching to be practiced, and not just a theory to be discussed in groups. Dorine Tolley Editor. Copyright © Dorine Tolley 2015 8 1 Levels of Consciousness There comes a realization to all seriously minded people that there is something missing in life – something, without which life does not make sense. We pursue this question in various ways and with varying degrees of persistence. After a time some decide that there is, in fact, nothing missing – and at this point the search for them comes to an end. Others may find a substitute that satisfies them for a little time, or indeed for a lifetime. But for others again the question remains open. That which is missing continues to elude them and the search continues. Man asks three basic questions: He looks out and sees the world around him, the magnificent display of the whole creation, and asks – what is this creation? What is its nature? What is it for? This question rapidly leads to another – how did this creation come into existence; how is it generated and sustained? And thirdly he asks – how do I fit in to all this? What is my relation to it? What is the purpose of my life? To find the answers to these fundamental questions we must start from where we are. We are in a room, in a house, in a street in a city. Beyond the city is the country, beyond the country all countries of the earth, beyond the earth the planets; beyond the planets, the sun, beyond the sun the galaxy and beyond that many galaxies. Behind and before us stretch the days, weeks, months, years, centuries, and millennia. As our view extends, we shrink and disappear. Where are we? It is a simple question. It is a daring man who asks simple questions. In answering them the wise man proceeds with caution. 9 Where are we most of the day? How much time do we spend transferred in imagination to another place and another time? Either rehearsing what we think is going to happen or reviewing something which has happened? How often do we imagine ourselves re-enacting a past event? Saying and doing all the things we could not think of at the time? And all this time we spend somewhere else at some other time, are we present or absent? Do we not talk of being absent- minded? May we not rise in the morning, dress, breakfast, catch our bus or train, buy our paper and reach our place of work quite automatically, while in imagination we are somewhere else? Would you call it being aware? Being present? Or being Lost? Add all this up, do we not spend much of our time oblivious to what is actually happening here and now? Our question is: ‘Where are we?’ The answer is: ‘Absent’. The first thing we have to learn about ourselves is that there are a number of levels of consciousness possible for man. The lowest level is deep sleep, as when we are asleep in bed at night. The next level is waking sleep; what we call being awake. The third level is self-consciousness. At this level a man knows all about himself and every person and event directly connected with him. At the fourth level, a man enjoys objective consciousness. In this state he sees the world as it really is. And there is a step beyond that. Each state of consciousness is related to the next as sleep to waking. Sleep is related to waking sleep (our ordinary state) as sleep to waking. Waking sleep is related to self–consciousness as sleeping to waking. Self-consciousness is related to objective consciousness as sleeping to waking. People pass from one state to the next by waking up or falling asleep. There are many references to this in the great religious writings. For example, the Christian year begins with Advent. The lesson for the first day in advent is taken from St. Paul and begins with these words: ”Now is the time to rise from sleep.” 10 The levels of consciousness shown on the diagram below represent great steps, and movement from one to the other is marked by a distinct jump, as in moving from sleep to waking. Within each of these great levels there are many degrees of consciousness. In sleep we are aware of separate things and know only in part. But the word ‘conscious’ means ‘to know all together’, and we will all have experienced those moments when we suddenly know all about the event in which we are involved and our own position in it. At such times many things are seen at once and the whole situation appears in an entirely new light. This is a foretaste of a level of awareness which is described as Self-consciousness. Above the level of ‘Self-consciousness’ is ‘Objective consciousness’ and even that is not the limit of the full development.

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