Multiverse Minutiae

Gurdjieff (1866 -1949) taught that most humans do not possess a unified consciousness and thus live their lives in a state of hypnotic "waking sleep", but that it is possible to awaken to a higher state of consciousness and achieve full human potential. Gurdjieff described a method attempting to do so, or “the Work” or “the System.” According to his principles and instructions, Gurdjieff's method for awakening one's consciousness unites the methods of the fakir, monk and yogi, and thus he referred to it as the "Fourth Way". In parallel with other spiritual traditions, Gurdjieff taught that a person must expend considerable effort to effect the transformation that leads to awakening. The effort that is put into practice Gurdjieff referred to as "The Work" or "Work on oneself".  Gurdjieff's teaching addressed the question of humanity's place in the universe and the importance of developing latent potentialities—regarded as ...

The Buddha who gave advice for living was a human being like any other, yet with a critical difference: he awakened his cosmic consciousness. The awakening of the consciousness is the very purpose of life. It is for this cause that every prophet, avatar, angel, buddha, or master ever appeared to humankind. From their lips emerged all of the world’s religions, and all with the purpose of indicating to those who are asleep that we need to awaken.  Buddhism and Christianity are both streams of wisdom that emerged from the same ocean of knowledge. We call this ocean Gnosis. Gnosis is a Greek word that means “knowledge.” Gnosis is the root wisdom of all the world’s religions.  Gnosis is objective, pure, universal, absolute, conscious wisdom. Gnosis is beyond time and space, beyond culture, beyond history. Early 3rd century–4th century Christian writers such as Hippolytus and Epiphanius write about a Scythianus, w...

In Philip K. Dick’s The   Man in the High Castle , there is a book within the book that describes an alternate history within an alternate history. That book is called  The Grasshopper Lies Heavy . But if that alternate history is real, then the upward implication from book within a book to the reader is that we ourselves live in a fictional construct — one which might betray its fictionality through consulting the I-Ching for a window on the next level up. We must awaken from this dream through alchemy of the  I Ching .  Philip K. Dick used his consultations with the  I Ching  to determine the paths of characters within his simulated reality of the alternative history. The novel not only features the  I-Ching , Dick claims that it was actually in part written by the  I-Ching . He says he used the book of changes as a creative guide, ceding decision making about many aspects of the narrative to the text of the hexagrams. According to...