.                                               Paranoia

Paranoia, the dungeon of the prison of psychosis, offers instantaneous relief from all psychic pain, and a simple—if horrible—world view:  I am being eaten, and I must prevent that—–in order to avoid total annihilation.

.                       Is This View Correct?  Is One Being Eaten?

In my opinion, this view is quite true, but only half–true.  One is being eaten. Everything in the Universe is being eaten—or eating—or preparing to be eaten—or preparing to eat.

.                       What is It Like to Be Eaten by Lower Forces?

When a cow falls into a piranha-infested stream, its body is going to be eaten by lower animals, the hungry fish who just wish to stay alive.

When a human being falls into paranoia, its spirit is going to be eaten by lower entities, feeding themselves, trying to ascend.

.                     What is It Like to Be Eaten by Higher Forces?

This sort of being eaten is, in its own way, even more painful: the pain is the pain of fire, of bright light; it’s the pain of Adam and Eve being seen by God as naked.  And the “food” (us) continues to be eaten and doesn’t try to escape.

I see myself as I am.  This is the experience that people who die and come back describe as being in a bright light; it is what happens to us when we die; sometimes, before we die. (“My life flashed before my eyes”)

For me, the experience of being seen for ten seconds by a Messenger from God was this experience.  I was unprepared for it, but it is known that a few people were prepared to be seen by (that is, “eaten by”) such a Messenger for much longer.

In 1988, I remembered that experience:

One day—I was alone in the shop, looking, as I did, onto the street—three bearded men in white walked by.  One of them stopped, and, from the street, caught my gaze in his.  In an instant, I knew that he Knew.  He knew everything about me: my life, my pleasures, my hopes, my worries.  But that was not important.  He knew something else.  He was that something, and as he looked at me—ten seconds perhaps—I saw that my life was a little thing, an unimportant thing.  It meant nothing whether my business failed or I became rich, whether I had a shrew for a wife or an adoring woman.  None of it mattered.

Only love of the Higher would impel me not to run.

.                             Why Prepare to Eat?

If I am to benefit from nourishing food, I must be present to the eating.

But if I am being fed “pig swill” I must be absent, so as not to suffer.

.                          Why Prepare to be Eaten?

This depends on what is to eat me:

The preparation for being eaten by lower forces takes place mechanically, in my inner darkness.  The details (and especially the big picture) of this preparation are not seen, or if seen, rationalized away.  The deer does not picture, does not prepare—to be eaten alive by the tiger.

The preparation for being eaten by higher forces takes place intentionally.  This is what Gurdjieff talks about as “intentional suffering.”  If I am to be eaten by the Higher, I must become tasty and clean, not a raw piece of meat, or a cooked steak that was dropped in the mud and cleaned off with a hand.

.                      Why Would Anyone Suffer Like That?

Obviously, without seeing the necessity—and the overwhelming difficulty—no one would prepare themselves thus.  This is why real Teachings are so un-popular.

And here we find Conscience again.  Only real Conscience can convince me that if I can clean out my emotional garbage (that is, if I can have a “clean heart”), I can become suitable food for the Higher.   If I find the one that loves God in me, I find Conscience.

.                      Lou Gottlieb                              1/31/2022