The enduring legend - to stumble upon the lamp post in the wood

Enlightenment, revelation, illumination.

This persistent idea is our own world’s ‘Tale of Power’; It is a story told around the fireside.

That a state of consciousness might hypothetically exist ‘above’ our own; A state as different, as wakefulness is to being asleep.

It is impossible to conceive of this from our current state, as we are viewing from a position of relative sleep and using the language of sleep.

We can only approach it by analogy and then only tangentially as though glancing through the corner of the eye.

As with ‘flatland’; We are at a loss when attempting to conceive of a ‘higher’ dimensional reality. All attempts carry the whiff of our own world.

The difference cannot be just of degrees it must be of an order of magnitude.

We can only make contact by adopting comparison and equivalence.

We are able to picture ourselves inhabiting a lower dimensional world. The hypothesisied two dimensional world of ‘flatland’; and then go on to imagine what contact with our everyday world would be like for us as a ‘flatlander.’

How could we bring back information (revelation) from the ‘real world’ to the world of ‘flatland’?

Absence of appropriate language would appear the insurmountable barrier. We would probably be skirting the very dangerous territory of madman and heretic among our fellow flatlanders if we even tried.

And so with consciousness, we need to imagine that we are living in a state of sleep to have any conception of what ‘wakefulness’ might be like. This is not just a difference of degrees, it is a difference in ones state of being.

From our world of sleep, we can only hypothesise using our tools of analogy. We can dream about what it might be like to be awake.

We can speculate. For instance, if two ‘enlightened’ people walked past each other in the street. Would they recognise each other?

In a room full of sleeping people, if two wake they will certainly be aware of each other. They will instantly recognise each others state and also at a glance who is deeply asleep and who is stirring from slumber. Those asleep may dream of the room, dream of the other people and even dream of being awake but their world to a large degree remains but a reflection of themselves.

When Gurdjeff,without embellishment states that, man cannot ‘do’! (and with whom and through whom everything just ‘happens,’ ), He is talking relatively.

Someone who is awake inhabits a more encompassing world than the one of the sleeper. The actions of the one awake can destroy the world of the dreamer.

The sleepers ‘actions’ can have no effect on the one awake. They are phantom.

The one asleep also possesses a ‘body of action’, but it is inert and disconnected.

A sleeping person can never outwit someone who is awake. They may dream of the possibility, but somehow only end up chasing their own reflection. If conversely, the awoken chooses to gently shake the slumberer, then all becomes the roar of thunder. The mountains crumble and the dreamer fears their world is about to end.