This is a reply to # 1,486,916

From “In Search of the Miraculous – The Teaching of G. I Gurdjieff.”

The Classic Exploration of eastern Religious Thinking and Philosophy

P. D. Ouspensky

 

“All the substances necessary for the maintenance of the life of the organism, for psychic work, for the higher functions of consciousness and the growth of the higher bodies, are produced by the organism from the food which enters it from outside.

 

“The human organism receives three kinds of food:

1. The ordinary food we eat.

2. The air we breathe

3. Our impressions.

“It is not difficult to agree that air is a kind of food for the organism. But in what way impressions can be food may appear at first difficult to understand. We must however remember that, with every external impression, whether it takes the form of sound, or vision, or smell, we receive from outside a certain amount of energy, a certain number of vibrations; this energy which enters the organism from outside is food. Moreover, as has been said before, energy cannot be transmitted without matter. If an external impression brings external energy with it into the organism it means that external matter also enters which feeds the organism in full meaning of the term.

 

...

 

Without air a man can exist only for a few minutes, ... . without impressions a man cannot live a single moment. ... The principal motor for us is nature, the surrounding world. Nature transmits to us through our impressions the energy by which we live and move and have our being.”