Conscience, the Representative of the Creator in Us
Lou Gottlieb
photo by Nic Askew
Essays, Memories, and Stories
Essays
Conscience—if not guilt or right and wrong, what is it?—-some hints
Conscience …… is called the Representative of the Creator. - Gurdjieff Conscience is a dog that does not stop us from passing, but that we cannot prevent from barking. - Nicolas de Chamfort Conscience is a man's compass, and though the needle sometimes...
APPROPRIATE NOW—The Rising Generation
For years I had wondered how young people in general, especially those born after 1985, would take over adult functions when they grew into adults. In my mind, I couldn’t get the children to fit the adult responsibilities. My father told a story of a man working in a...
A Report on the War on Conscience
The Fathers of the Church have, at long last, succeeded. The Catholic Army of the War on Conscience has been hugely successful. The Army has succeeded in short-circuiting many of the spiritual energies in practicing Catholics, and better yet, even in former Catholics....
I Have. I Need.
I believe that I have money, a car, a house, and things. I believe that I have relatives, friends, a partner, relationships, children I believe that I have the correct view of myself. That I am a good person. I believe that I need the possessions I have. I...
Being is self-assembling
Like in some computer-generated graphic implosion, each piece of our being fits perfectly with each other piece. If we let the pieces assemble themselves (and we certainly have to love God a lot to do so) we will suffer much, but our being will eventually be...
Subjectivity
The world is one thing, right? Anyone can see that. People have different views of it, but it’s still only one thing. It’s like the blind men and the elephant. Of course, I’m not blind, and my view of the world isn’t partial like theirs. But sometimes it...
Forgiving
When I really understand how I could not have been even a tiny bit different, something shifts in me, something relaxes. Something forgives.
Staying with a Disturbance
From out of the blue, someone has criticized me. There was malice in their tone of voice, a wish to hurt. I am disturbed and offended. If I can not contact anything real in myself, one of three things is likely to happen: 1) I will ignore the whole thing, and the...
The Prodigal Son Returns
When World War II ended, among the displaced persons in Europe were orphaned children, children who had survived in ruined cities literally hand-to-mouth: fierce, rude, dirty, sly, manipulative, trusting no one. These were feral children, and when conditions became...
On the Side of the Angels
Perhaps the most shocking thing Mrs. Staveley ever said to me was that one should not be identified with the Higher. I thought that “being on the side of the angels” was desirable. But no, she said. We have to suffer being between two worlds. This is a harder road to...
I Am. I Have a Body.
I am. I have a body. I hear this said from time to time, and I believe it, but----can I practice it? Almost from birth, I am treated as if I was my body, by people who are identified with their bodies. This is the unspoken basis of my early education. So when I...
Think for Yourself. Work for the World.
Think for yourself. Work for the world. If you think for yourself, you will have doubts and questions. You will suffer. You will be able to ask for help. And you will learn. If you work for the world, you will become part of something...
Namaste
Namaste - - - I bow to God within you. I cannot see God manifesting in you - - - probably you cannot see God manifesting in you, either. And yet - - - I know it is there, potential in you, but at this moment I am not connected with it. So------I use my imagination:...
Imprisonment
I lie, half-awake, in bed. My body is not comfortable. If I try to fall asleep anyway, my sleep will probably be disturbed; but I know that if I wake up enough to make my body comfortable, my sleep will be more sound, and deeper. So I do that. I notice that my body...
Jesus and the Crucifixion
He (in one lifetime), purified his spirit completely. With suffering.
Psychosis, the Higher & the Lower
What is psychosis? From my own experience, I have come to believe that psychosis is a connection to unseen inner forces: a connection to energies either higher or lower than human, a connection to forces which the victim is unprepared to meet, forces that most often...
NOTES TO MYSELF – – from 2021 to present
1/3/21 Schizophrenia causes premature, unearned enlightenment. Unquestionable light, but very destructive enlightenment nonetheless. - - - - - - - - The Germans wanted to create the perfect human: one without conscience. They still don't understand why almost everyone...
Deep Memories
How I became a Nazi
How I became a Nazi I keep on trying to understand the event I know caused me to become a Nazi. It is imprinted on my memory: I am locked into a smallish room with only me, my wife and my daughter in the room. The two of them...
The Kapo’s Tale
I wish to confess to you, before I am dead myself. Even to wish to be chosen as a kapo, as the head of a work crew, is an act of supreme egotism: to choose your own survival over another’s survival is understandable; to do so repeatedly is an act of monstrous egotism....
About the Memories
In 1988, as a then-17-year-member of a group studying and trying to practice the ideas of the man George Gurdjieff, I had a revelation during a meditation session: I had once seen and been seen by a man who could only have been Jesus. That same day I wrote an account...
How my Conscience Was Awakened
I was a merchant in Jerusalem. I sold tall clay jars and wine in tall jars in a narrow stall on a big street of such stalls. My business was a profitable one, I made a good living, and I enjoyed my work. I had many friends, some very close. My wife was a wonderful...
The Holocaust and Conscience
The Holocaust was about the death of conscience, the deliberate murder of conscience---and from it, the Germans accrued a hideous karmic debt, a debt that still remains largely unpaid. It's like the Chinese invading and destroying Tibet, their conscience. Or the...
Since Jerusalem
Life after life, I remembered His eyes, but life after life, nothing changed. It wasn’t working. Finally, I agreed to be broken down, decrystallized. It would not be pleasant. Centuries ago, I was tortured and totally humiliated. I became full of hatred, a toady; I...
The Shame Factory
It is difficult for people today (or even then) to understand how a small number of guards could keep a large number of concentration camp prisoners in thrall. The explanation lies in the experiences which all the prisoners underwent. From being transported by cattle...
Decrystallization
This process occasionally happens to a man in ordinary life: Someone or something from a higher level makes a strong contact with him, and irrevocably awakens his conscience. Many lives pass, but no connection to an esoteric school is made. Gradually and inevitably,...
Former Treblinka commandant speaks
[Treblinka was one of the most notorious Death Camps the Nazis built, primarily for murdering Jews] From interviews of former Treblinka commandant Franz Stangl by Gitta Sereny Franz Stangl had been commandant, first of Sobibor extermination camp for 4 months in 1942,...
Stories
About the Stories
Most of these stories are part of a now-136-story collection. The inspiration was from an exercise suggested by my teacher, Mrs. Staveley in the 1980s: "Ask yourself where you were at the Crucifixion." She thought most of us had been in the crowd, shouting "Crucify...
NEW–Jean Toomer’s Epiphany
Returned from Tenant’s Harbor and waiting idly one evening on the platform of the Sixty-sixth Street El station in New York, not in any hurry to get his train home, Toomer suddenly had a feeling of inner movement, as if some other power had taken over within him....
NEW–From Van der Post’s ‘The Prisoner and the Bomb’
Laurens Van der Post was a prisoner of the Japanese in WWII. One day he had a remarkable experience: All the Dutch and English senior officers were suddenly summoned to parade one afternoon in the prison quadrangle. The summons, though extremely quick and...
TOUCHING: A brief history of my parents
This is a compact, but essential history of my parents: My mother was born in Holland in 1904 My father was born in Germany in 1906 Both were born into Jewish families, but that's another story. My father's sister Hilda, worked for my mother's family, and, "I've got a...
MOVING: The Little Boy
Dear ____ . . . . I have a story to tell you. I'll try and tell it here. This is my first attempt, so it may be confused in places. This morning, as I was carrying my stuff from my motel room to the car, I had a clear vision, and I saw a little boy with a folded piece...
27 stories from “Where were you at the Crucifixion?”
27 Stories from the 136-Story Collection Where Were You at the Crucifixion? © 2008,2009 Introduction to the Stories How is it with me when I encounter something from a higher realm? Am I afraid? or angry? or hateful? Or, is something evoked in...
NEW: Four Stories of Rabbi Zusya
As told by Martin Buber in Tales of the Hasidim, The Early Masters. The Word This was told by Rabbi Israel of Rizhyn. "All the pupils of my ancestor, the Great Maggid, transmitted the teachings in his name----all except Rabbi Zusya. And the reason for this was...
