The Intellectual Part of the Instinctive Center Opposes Awakening

The Intellectual Part of the Instinctive Center Opposes Awakening

“Why does the intellectual part of the instinctive centre actively oppose self-remembering?"

The intellectual part of the instinctive center, or the King of Clubs, is totally dedicated to the preservation of the machine and the conservation of all its energies, including the higher ones. My teacher calls it “animal intelligence in human form”.

“As soon as a man awakens for a moment and opens his eyes, all the forces that caused him to fall asleep begin to act upon him with tenfold energy and he immediately falls asleep again, very often dreaming that he is awake or is awakening.”, says Gurdjieff.

Our efforts to awaken use the highest energies available in the machine. When the King of Clubs detects that these energies are ‘going missing’ in the chemical factory, it takes measures to halt the ‘leak’.

“The moment you start self-observation something in you starts imagination, and self observation, if you really try it, is a constant struggle with imagination.”, writes Ouspensky in the Psychology.

This part of the machine is practically impossible to directly observe, as it likes to hide. We only see its traces. When we wake up in a given moment, it will cleverly bring up I’s with which we will identify and thus fall back to sleep. For example, we will get a sudden urge to see what time it is or to check our cell phone, or remember something that we forgot to do, or suddenly have an itch that we must scratch, or congratulate ourselves for finally being awake. All of these lead directly back into imagination.

This mechanism is part of the grand design. According to the system, the vast majority of humans are intended to be asleep so that they may serve the purposes of the Ray of Creation and feed the growth of the Earth’s moon. The King of Clubs is the built-in mechanism to insure that this does indeed happen. We can only overcome it in a conscious way, moment by moment - never in a mechanical way. By this very struggle, we create consciousness. Between our own efforts, and outside help, over a long period of time, it is possible to awaken permanently.

David Tuttle

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