Man/Nature

Man/Nature

MAN - Man is not born perfect. He is born incomplete. He is born
as a process. He is born on the way, as a pilgrim. That is his agony
and his ectasy too - agony because he cannot rest, he has to go
ahead, he has always to go ahead. He has to seek and search and
explore; he has to become, because his being arises only through
becoming. Becoming is his being. He can only be if he is on the
move. --- Evolution is intrinsic to man's nature, evolution is his very
soul. And those who take themselves for granted remain unfulfilled;
those who think they are born complete remain involved. Then
the seed remains the seed,
never becomes a tree, and never knows the joys of spring and the
sunshine and the rain, and the ecstasy of bursting into millions of
flowers. --- That explosion is the fulfillment, that explosion is what
God is all about - exploding into millions of flowers. When the
potential becomes the actual, only then is man fulfilled. Man is born
as a potential; that is unique to man. All other animals are born
complete, they are born as they are going to die. There is no
evolution between their birth and their death: they move on the same
plane, they never go through any transformation. No radical change in
their life ever happens. They move horizontally, the vertical never
penetrates them. --- If man also moves horizontally he will miss his
manhood, he will not become a soul. That's what Gurdjieff meant
when he used to say that all people don't have souls. It is a very rare
that a person has a soul. Now this is a very strange statement,
because down the ages you have been told that you are born with a
soul. Gurdjieff says you are born only with the potential of becoming
a soul, not with the actual soul. You have a blueprint, but the
blueprint has to be worked out. You have the seed, but you have to
search for the soil, and the season, and the right climate, and the
right moment to explode, to grow. --- Moving horizontally, you will
remain without a soul. When the vertical penetrates you, you become
a soul. "Soul" means the vertical has penetrated into the horizontal.
Or, as an example, you can think of a caterpillar, the cocoon, and the
butterfly. --- Man is born as a larva. Unfortunately, many die also as
larvae, very few become caterpillars. A larva is static: it knows no
movement, it remains stuck at one space, at one place, at one stage.
Very few people grow into caterpillars. The caterpillar starts
moving; dynamism enters. The larva is static, the caterpillar moves.
With movement, life is stirred. Again many remain caterpillars: they
go on moving horizontally, on the same plane, in one dimension.
Rarely, a man like Buddha - or Jalaluddin Rumi or Jesus or Kabir -
takes the final quantum leap and becomes a butterfly. Then the
vertical enters in. --- The larva is static; the caterpillar moves,
knows movement; the butterfly flies, knows heights, starts moving
upwards. The butterfly grows wings; those wings are the goal.
Unless you grow wings and you become a winged phenomenon,
you will not have a soul that is evolving. ---


				*Man/Nature*