Escape from Prison

Escape from Prison

From our friend, David T.

“Why is C Influence so important?”

To escape from prison, we need help from people outside of prison, or Influence C. It takes luck to realize that we are even in prison. The prison is sleep. Gurdjieff mentions that it is not an ordinary sleep, but a kind of hypnotic sleep. Yes, we are hypnotized by identification and kept there by imagination, the unconscious turning of the windmills of the mind.

These people outside of the prison are the inner circle of humanity, who presumably, exist without physical bodies and somehow direct spiritual life, if not all life, on earth. In order to escape the prison, we must make a connection with someone who is directly or indirectly connected to this circle of humanity.

To escape sleep, we need help - a lot of help and help for a long time. This help can only consist in waking us up. When we hear the sound of the alarm clock in the morning, it is practically never a pleasant sound. It must be the same with awakening. Yes, we can invent our own alarm clocks, but soon enough we are dreaming about winding the alarm clocks and dreaming that we are waking up when they sound. So, we need help to truly awaken.

"But there are a thousand things which prevent a man from awakening, which keep him in the power of his dreams. In order to act consciously with the intention of awakening, it is necessary to know the nature of the forces which keep man in a state of sleep.

"First of all it must be realized that the sleep in which man exists is not normal but hypnotic sleep. Man is hypnotized and this hypnotic state is continually maintained and strengthened in him. One would think that there are forces for whom it is useful and profitable to keep man in a hypnotic state and prevent him from seeing the truth and understanding his position.

"There is an Eastern tale which speaks about a very rich magician who had a great many sheep. But at the same time this magician was very mean. He did not want to hire shepherds, nor did he want to erect a fence about the pasture where his sheep were grazing. The sheep consequently often wandered into the forest, fell into ravines, and so on, and above all they ran away, for they knew that the magician wanted their flesh and skins and this they did not like.

"At last the magician found a remedy. He hypnotized his sheep and suggested to them first of all that they were immortal and that no harm was being done to them when they were skinned, that, on the contrary, it would be very good for them and even pleasant; secondly he suggested that the magician was a good master who loved his flock so much that he was ready to do anything in the world for them; and in the third place he suggested to them that if anything at all were going to happen to them it was not going to happen just then, at any rate not that day, and therefore they had no need to think about it. Further the magician suggested to his sheep that they were not sheep at all; to some of them he suggested that they were lions, to others that they were eagles, to others that they were men, and to others that they were magicians.

"And after this all his cares and worries about the sheep came to an end. They never ran away again but quietly awaited the time when the magician would require their flesh and skins.

"This tale is a very good illustration of man's position.” – Gurdjieff in In Search of the Miraculous

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Image: St Peter liberated from Prison by an Angel, Matthias Stom