George Gurdjieff - Ideas

Ideas

Gurdjieff claimed that people cannot perceive reality in their current states because they do not possess consciousness but rather live in a state of a hypnotic "waking sleep."

"Man lives his life in sleep, and in sleep he dies." As a result of this condition, each person perceives things from a completely subjective perspective. He asserted that people in their typical state function as unconscious automatons, but that one can "wake up" and become a different sort of human being altogether.

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Famous quotes containing the word ideas:

    Olympian bards who sung
    Divine ideas below,
    Which always find us young,
    And always keep us so.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    ... I want to live and be happy. I believe that we cannot be one or the other by pushing the absurd to all its consequences. I am like everyone. To feel liberated, I sometimes wish death on my loved ones, I covet the wives forbidden to me by the laws of family and friendship. To be logical, I should then kill or possess. But I judge that these vague ideas are unimportant. I everyone tried to put them to reality, we could neither live nor be happy.
    Albert Camus (1913–1960)

    The art of the critic in a nutshell: to coin slogans without betraying ideas. The slogans of an inadequate criticism peddle ideas to fashion.
    Walter Benjamin (1892–1940)