Welcome to a new series of podcasts based upon the teachings of Russell A. Smith, a man who discovered an objective and accelerated way to awaken higher consciousness, the seats of conscience, pure reason and impartiality. Russell’s work expands upon the Fourth Way teachings of George I. Gurdjieff, and deciphers much of what Gurdjieff left behind. 

In this series, we play extracts of recordings of Russell teaching his classes. This episode is where we cover the subject of “intolerance, and the need to find commonality in ourselves.”

A question was initially asked about why we have intolerance, even when life appears good. 

All right, the question is about our intolerance to the life in the world, even though things may be going for okay for us. We still have a sense of intolerance. Okay. First of all, let's get a definition of the word intolerance. Somebody look that up for me.

An answer was provided: “Unwillingness to accept views, beliefs or behavior that differ from one's own. An inability to eat a food or take a drug without adverse effects.”

I don't think the second one is probably in the mix and tolerance to foods and drugs and things, but I think the main idea is the noun of this unwillingness to accept views, beliefs or behavior that differ from one's own.

God, has that hit the nail on the head of life, of how it acts, how it breaks down into cultures and groups and cliques and the shop guys and the sports guys and the Dems and the Repubs and the Catholics and the Baptists and the Muslims, and everything is built around this sense of an unwillingness to accept views, beliefs or behavior that differ from one's own. 

How sad is that?

Why are we so intolerant? Where did that come from? Why do you think we developed into such a race that if you didn't think like I thought, if you didn't have the same beliefs that I have, we will go wipe you out, kill you, take your land, kill your family, take your animals. Why are we filled with this sense of conquerors, everybody who doesn't believe what we believe?

You know, most wars were really started based on religions, weren't they? They were religious backed and based from the Crusades onward.

Why are we that way? 

An observation was subsequently made that self-awareness reveals how attachment to identity can trigger defensive or aggressive reactions when faced with conflicting viewpoints or behaviors.

That's a good point. I suppose that might be the real crux of the issue, because the moment that somebody else offers an opinion, or view, or belief, or a different behavior than the one that I have, that must threaten the one that I have as not being correct, or I would have had that same view, or belief, or acted in that same way. 

So, anything that’s contrary to what I believe or what my view is, insinuates that my belief or view is wrong, and therefore I'm flawed. There's something wrong with me, and I don't want to be wrong. I don't want to be flawed. I want to be the king of the mountain. I want to be in charge. I want to be the alpha male in this world in my community and my neighborhood and my, and my group and my religious, I want to be the guy in charge. And anybody that comes up with a different model and challenges me, I got to fight him off. 

Well, it's a sad thing that we do that we do have such intolerance to everybody else's beliefs and views. 

I think the real idea is that we have to seek this aim of becoming impartial in ourselves. Now, that's a name down the road, guys. That's not something we mail out and order it, and, you know, comes in three days in UPS. That's something we work through, first awakening, and then developing our Master exercises, and then developing a Double or Nothing Part One and Two exercises, which give us a chance to come to a moment where we can start being impartial. Where it doesn't matter that I don't have the same beliefs. It doesn't matter that I don't have the same views. It doesn't matter that I'd have different behavior than other people. Just like I don't walk up to people and check what their hand looks like and say, your fingerprints aren't the same as mine, and now we're going to fight.

I allow those differences. So, an impartial human being expands that to something more than just fingertips. It expands it to their look, their height, their color, their age, their clothing, their religious beliefs, their ideologies, their favorite sports team.

Hey, I've got a favorite sports team. Well, I used to, I don’t any more. But I used to have a favorite sports team, so I can allow everybody else to have a favorite sports team. Does it have to be mine? No. It's a favorite sports team. I have one. So, in that sense, we have the same view. We both have favorite sports teams. 

Oh, you are really excited about this person is in the beauty pageant, and you really want her to win? Well, this guy over here is really excited about this other person in the beauty pageant, and he really wants them to win. In that model, they're both the same. They both have a great desire for the person in the beauty pageant to win. They might be different people, but impartiality doesn't look at the specific result. It looks at the freedom of people that are exactly the same.

I like this team. He likes that team. We're the same. I like this religion. You like that religion. We both like a religion. We're the same.

And as we start to broaden our thinking out from just focusing on the specific, then the idea that they want to cheer for somebody's success is no different than me wanting to cheer for somebody's success.

So, in that way, we're all made the same, and I can start to become impartial to things, because I can look at them from a bigger scale. Oh, you come from a planet? Hey, I come from a planet too. Oh, you live in this state. Oh, I live in a state too. Your country has a flag, so does mine. We're just the same. 

So, something broads in me as I start to back up from the model to where the individual thing disappears, but the concept is the same.

A comment was then made about the scientist Jared Diamond's work which illustrated how, until recently, some tribes in Borneo had to either find a common ancestor or resort to violence when encountering outsiders, reflecting humanity's long history of tribal conflict and kinship-based peacekeeping.

Yeah, perhaps they should have found to see if they both have hands, and if they both have hands, it's okay, we can let each other live. Because if we wanted to get truthful, these guys could have traced themselves all the way back to bacteria, so we're all related. So, there is nobody that's not a relation of everybody else.

So, if you wanted to get really specific on the idea, we all have a common relative.

Somebody says we can trace ourselves back to Lucy, but it goes back before that. We've got the same X number of genes as a carrot, so we have common relatives that go all the way back to the beginning of time.

So, hey, there should never be any fights because we have so much in common.

But you see people aren't that clever, people aren't that smart. They say, “Well, you can't go back that far, you have to go back just to your grandparents, or your great grandparents, or the people that live in my tribe,” And therefore we set conditions, conditions of our intolerance.

And that's just as bad as the idea of being intolerant, because now we're, “Oh, you don't agree with my conditions, and I don't accept your views, beliefs, or behavior, because I say we need to go back five generations and you say we should go back six.” And therefore, more intolerance is built into whatever model, the moment that I start putting conditions on it. 

What about unconditional? What about, if you walk out in the yard and you saw a baby bird that had fallen out of its nest, what would you want to do? Step on it? Use your boot to crush its head? Or would you want to pick the little damn bird up and put it back in its nest? If you're in Africa and you're walking along and there's a little lion that has stumbled, fallen out of his den, God, I'd like to think that a conscious human being would say, God, that little lion’s in jeopardy. He’s just a little infant. Wouldn’t you want to get him back and put him in his den?

So even though we would be afraid of the adult lion, there's something that's right that says protect everything, be respectful to it all. Find a bigger thing, we both live in Africa. We both have a right to life. I know the difficulties of youth, because I grew up as one, and so I can know the difficulties you're going to have if you've stumbled out of your den. So, gosh, I've got to help you. I've got to do it. So now, if two guys meet out in the bush, they ought to say, “Oh, cool, another being on this planet that I haven't met before, how are you doing?” Offer the symbol of handshake, put down my weapon, and by my own action, tame the wild beast in somebody else.

An insight was shared that even in potentially hostile encounters, people instinctively seek common ground as a means of fostering connection and avoiding conflict.

That's a great thought, but I think I want to extend it beyond that, that we don't have to sit down and try to find out what we have in common. We already have something in common. I mean, why does he really need a list? Okay, what should we do? Should we pass this bill or not? And somebody says we shouldn't, and somebody says we should, and so now what do we got to do? Sit down and find something that's in common, follow some ideology? 

You know, how is it possible that half of a legislative group, connected by a political party, always thinks different than the other half of the political group, that's affiliated to some other party? How's that possible? Aren't people capable of thinking from themselves? Aren't we just slaves that follow what the party says? It sounds like Nazis. It sounds like a twisted way. 

It eliminates free thinking men. We all have something in common, we want the best for people. God, how is it possible that half of them want this thing and half of them want that thing? And there's no more individuality. There's no more, you know. 

Now, two warriors want to meet in the jungle and decide for themselves if they need to fight or not. That's different, but to do it because of some well-learned ritual that says here's what you do when you meet somebody from a different party in the woods. You sit down and see if you ever voted together on the same bill before you kill them. That's stupid, absolutely stupid that we draw anything narrow. We've got to keep it wide. We've got to keep it wide.

You know, we've seen great movies in the past about some guy from America, get stranded on some island with some guy from Japan during the war, from some other culture. And now they meet on this island, but they both need to escape. They have something in common. They don't try to kill each other. They now band together to try and find a way to escape.

It transcends wars. You know, we're human beings. We don't need to sit down and find common ancestors now. Now, okay, I will say, well, that was better than just the fact that you saw the guy from the hundred yards away, you ran at him with your spear and tried to stab him before you stabbed you. Then there's instant resistance to those people, but to realize that we're living in this world together.

And man, I mean, does this bushman walk through the bush and sees a buffalo, he tries to stab him, or does he look for a common ancestor before he can stab him? What's the difference?

Every plant he goes by, he rips out before he looks for a common, or does he say, “Yeah, you're living on this earth, too. And you're living on this land, and I'm living on this land, and together we'll survive together.” We'll find the fact that we will have a common aim to survive that bonds us more than some other. Are we all of the same height, or the same color or skin, or have the same size ring nose in our nose?

So, you know, I like the idea that people seek things in common, but what I'm trying to say is intolerance can be eliminated if we realize that we have, on a big scale, at the most fundamental level, a great commonness with everyone we meet. And therefore, we should respect and treat everybody with kindness and love. Now, that doesn't say, go down into the worst area of the town that you live in, where there's a lot of violence, and drugs, and stabbings, and murders, and walk down the street handing out flyers that say, I love you all. You know, we're going to use our good sense about us, but when I encounter people in my normal path of life, even though they look different, or talk different, or back a different belief structure, and have a cross on their chest.

A student who was a parent described a realization that their long-standing frustration and disapproval with their son stemmed from their own unmet expectations, and that they found freedom in accepting their son's different yet self-sufficient approach to life.

It's a wonderful thing when a man starts to free himself from his identifications, that the wall isn't painted red, and my favorite color is red, and these people should have painted the goddamn wall red because it would have looked better with the color of that. So, oh my God, listen to me. Listen to my identifications. I have decided what the whole world was supposed to be like based on my identifications. Instead of trying to be free from the identifications and just seeing for what it is. You know, I raise a child, I give him some views or opinions that I think are valuable. I probably give him ones that aren't valuable as well. And the rest of the world gives him views and opinions, and he picks from that to hodgepodge the views and opinions that he wants to follow, that he believes in more than another. And he establishes for his life.

You know, I was always hoping it would be the business of father and son, and he'd become a plumber like me. Instead, he became an electrician. What a traitor. You see, I'm caught by my own identifications instead of applauding him for choosing a more difficult path. It would have been easier to choose a path and be a plumber like me, just I would have gave him a job and I would have gave him a good pay, and he would have learned from me what to do. 

Instead, he chose to be an electrician and had to go to a school and learn from somebody else, didn't have all the supports. Oh my God. And instead of ridiculing him for not choosing what I wanted, I should be applauding him for having the courage to choose what he wanted. 

So, to be able to take our blinders of identification off of our own eyes and see the world as it is and not bitchin' complain, because it's not the way that we would like it to be, it's a great moment,

Finally, an insight was offered that the universal concept of common  humanity, as embodied in the opening words "Our Father" from the Lord's Prayer, could transform relationships and society if the deeper meaning was fully embraced and internalized.

That's what I'm trying to help us get to the idea of. Impartiality means, I don't kill it if it breathes. That's a pretty big scope there. Everything that's alive has a right to stay alive.

Now, if you're just a rock, I can mold you, chop you up, break you with a hammer, fashion you into a brick that I can build the wall with instead of killing you and making one out of your bones.

So, it's such a big model for man to get, and we keep making it more narrow, and more narrow, and more narrow, and so we don't have yay for my country. We then went down to yay for my city, and then it's yay for my little group and yay for my family until there's not going to be anything but discord in wars because no two people are alike, so the stage of intolerance is vastly bigger than it used to be.

Well, in World War II came around and everybody jumped up and waved their flags. When the World Trade Center was bombed by somebody and everybody, regardless of political persuasion or religious beliefs, at least in our country, jumped on the bandwagon and all said, We have something in common that unites us. We need to find, the idea of our father, or if they breathe, or if you have eyes, you know, you find something so big that allows you to love everybody and I'll treat them and allow them their own views. Like I said at first, you have different views than me, yee-haw, you have views. I can talk to you. It's hard to talk to my dog. I love my dog, but he can't converse back. He can't share his ideas.

Hey, you know what? Maybe some of the ideas that you share with me, that may be different than mine, will give me data that I can learn something. Oh, I never thought of fishing with that kind of bait before. Oh, I never tried to build something that way before. Oh, I never thought of using that as a fuel source. Wow.

And so, you know, the moment that I open up to the fact that there are different beliefs and different views means I have a greater chance to learn. And the more I learn, the more I find myself in common with everybody else, and I don't want to kill my neighbor anymore. 

Now, the important thing that we have to learn here, it's hard to be unintolerant when you're asleep. The higher you rise on your journey, the more tolerance you'll have for life. I guess that's why, you know, somebody in our model of Jesus, you know, he loved everybody. He welcomed everybody in. He helped the blind. He let the children come in. There wasn't, “Oh, we can't have entertained these people. They're from a different set. They're from a different group. They're just kids.” Wow. It extended to everybody. 

So, that's the aim then. The aim is to not conquer intolerance. The aim is to conquer ourselves. The aim is to become higher beings. The aim is to become awake, develop connection with higher mental center, develop impartiality, and that comes from our own development. That will solve intolerance.

So, yeah, you know, we can say initially, “Well, okay, put up with this guy and deal with him and then, you know, kill him later.” But we don't want to do that. We want to be high enough where we don't make excuses and accept them. You know, I'll accept what you're saying. I don't want to do that. I want to be free from what you're saying. I want to allow it.

And so, our real aim is to become higher beings. If we do that, we will conquer all the stuff that comes from lower centers. Like the Bible said, and like I put on one of my websites, you know, what constitutes a higher man. Well, it's like the 10 commandments. He won't kill and he won't steal and he won't covet your wife and he won't steal your cow. I mean, this is what a higher guy does.

So, we got to seek to become higher beings and then all of these things that hold us down and make us, in the sense, act like dogs, fighting pack animals. One group comes over and wants to wipe out the other group. We won't be that way. So, there's your aim. 

The aim, I would say, is not to become intolerant. The aim is to become a higher person because intolerance will fall away when you do.

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That concludes today’s podcast. Thank you for listening.

If you would like to learn more about Russell’s work on how to become objectively conscious, simply visit our website thedogteachings.com and acquire Russell Smith’s book, The Blueprint of Consciousness - An Accelerated Path to Awakening, which is also available as a PDF download.

There, you will also be able to listen to other talks, access transcripts of these podcasts, diagrams, animations, supporting videos, and much more.

But most importantly, you may fulfill your true potential, which is your right, and it no longer takes a lifetime to achieve.

And as a reminder, we have two ZOOM classes every Sunday to assist you; one is for purchasers of Mr. Smith’s book, and the other is for those who have additionally obtained the Master Exercises and the Double or Nothing Exercises. See under Resources/Zoom Classes for more details.

At the thedogteachings.com. 

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Goodbye, until next time.