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 recordings of Russell teaching his actual classes. This episode is where Russell discusses conscience, Reason, and impartiality by explaining how these verifiable qualities can be manifested in everyday life through presence, objective thinking, and elimination of subjective bias, ultimately leading to a unified state of being that aligns with, and fulfills, one's highest potential as a human being.

We begin with a question which asks how you would know if you have conscience, reason, or impartiality, and how would they manifest in everyday life?

That's a good question, and like Gurdjieff said, everything has its availability to be verified. If you're going to the store and you go out your driveway and the store is to the right, and you turn left, you don't know how to get to the store, but if you turn right, then there's a way to verify that.

So, what is these functions called conscience, reason, and impartiality? Conscience is a state of being present at the moment, instead of being here yesterday, or being in tomorrow, but being there, here and now, what I am doing, I am there doing it. There's a sense of this double arrow of attention. There is me doing a function, and there is me watching myself do the function. I am there both doing it and being an observer of myself doing it. It like a double arrow of attention. One on the thing I'm doing, and one on watching myself do it.

So, that can kind of give us a sense of conscience of the realization that we're present in the function that we're going through. If I'm in the kitchen washing the dishes, and I'm thinking of something else, I might pick up a sharp knife out of the bottom and cut myself, but if I'm there, then I'm aware of all the things. It's hard to describe, but there's a sense of me being there washing the dishes and not being somewhere else, and having my thoughts pulled and distracted, or my feelings causing me to slam the dishes around a little bit, because I'm upset at my partner or my neighbour. There's a certain sense of presence there that occupies this space along with me, and that's what conscience is.

As far as reason and impartiality, reason is a something that when it occurs, one stops looking for the answers. We have the Higher Feedback exercise, which is a great beginner of reason, that we can actually get information from our databases. We have all this knowledge that we've acquired during our life, and I call reason the “similarities to the already arisen,” because that means I can come to a chasm, and there is a tree across the chasm, and I can use that tree to cross the chasm.

Well, that's now a model in my intellectual base, and then I come to another chasm, and there's no tree across the chasm, and there's no trees near the chasm that I could push over or cut down and have them fall across the chasm and used to get across. So how am I going to cross that chasm? Well, my reason will say, you know, something that can go across the chasm, now, perhaps there's some lumber, I could nail it together and make it look into a structure like a tree. Perhaps there's something metal or plastic, that's rigid that I could lay on the ground between two raised points and step on it to see if it'll hold my weight, and I could extend that, or a couple of those across the chasm, so I can construct similarities to the already arisen, and therefore get something to span the chasm that I could go across on, even though I have never used that before, to go across the chasm.

And I know you heard my goofy story about the water in my bathtub drain freezing one winter, and oh my God, it took me all day to get it to defrost, so water would go down the bathtub, and the next night it was supposed to be colder, and I thought, oh my God, if it freezes again in the trap, cracks because of the expanding water, that would be a mess to try and get out of the house and take the underlie floor off, and oh my God, what am I going to do to stop it from freezing?

Well, I asked that question to my higher feedback, and of course you have ideas pop in, maybe go down and get some antifreeze from the hardware store. Does antifreeze hurt PVC pipe? I don't know, is that something safe, or there'd be gases or so.

So, you're looking at possibilities, but none of them are like a reason, because when reason happens you quit looking, and then the higher said to me, “Put salt down the drain.”

Oh, wait a minute, I never use salt down the drain before to keep things from freezing, but similarity to the already arisen says, “Hey, that, softens the slippery sidewalk, if you throw salt on it.” And they throw salt in these trucks and spread them on the roads when I was in Ohio during the winter. So, salt down the drain lowers the freezing temperature of water, and that'll work. And that, when I heard that answer, I quit looking. The reason was there, and I knew I had the reason.

The same model that I've talked about many times when you're looking for the name of something or someone, or what the hell movie was that guy in? God, I've seen him on TV before? What was he in, what did I used to watch him in? And you don't know.

But then you're watching the movie, you stop thinking about it, and all of a sudden, out of nowhere comes the name of some show, and you go, “That was it!” It was like, wow, who was still looking for that? And then when it gave it to me, it was defined as, that was the answer, and therefore, from that moment on, I can quit looking for it.

So, reason has a way to be verified.

Impartiality, we know from the results of one of our later on exercises that says, when you become impartial, then you are not partial. You're not fooled by one thing or the other, you are kind of in between. You're not indifferent, but you're impartial.

One of the simple models is sometimes where Pamela is deciding what to watch, or what to have for dinner, we both sit and say, okay, what do you want? I don't know, well, you pick something. I don't know. Neither of us can make a decision because we're not fixed by something. Because, “Oh, I got to have hamburger,” or, “Oh, I need French fries,” or, “Oh, I want ice cream, or I want this, or let's watch that or this.” It's like, it doesn't matter. Something will get watched, something will get eaten.

Now, there's certainly a range of food that I wouldn't eat, or I might eat, but I wouldn’t desire to eat, because I haven't acquired a taste for a monkey brains yet. But there's a list of foods that my body is accustomed to, and anything off that list will be fine. There's no greater preference for this or that. They'll all work.

So, that also has a way to be tested. So, if you look at those things to see if, A. I'm present in the moment, as if there's a double arrow of attention with all of me there doing what I'm doing, and me watching myself do what I'm doing, I can verify my conscience.

If I have moments where I can look to higher feedback, or for the similarities to the already arisen, to extrapolate something that I've never done before, but it's built off some knowledge of something else, I can verify what reason is. And if I can find moments where I'm particularly free from choice, and don't have to make one, then I can maybe verify the impartiality I might have.

One of my first moments of realization of that was watching some stupid movie about a bunch of little kids, and the kid saw through a telescope, a comet or something in the sky. He called the observatory. They looked. They saw it. Oh my God. It was on a trajectory course for the planet. It was going to hit in the ocean cause a huge tidal wave that would have washed up for hundreds of miles in land and killed everybody, and oh my God, what were they going to do?

So, the government decided to hold a lottery, and the people that won would be shuttled into the mountain in Colorado and therefore wouldn't die when the water was washed across the planet. And so, people were getting for that. And the kid that saw it and discovered it, he automatically made the list of lottery. That's cool. And his family, because of his family, they got on the list too. And he had a girlfriend. He thought she was on the list. And just before the comet was going to hit, they were getting ready to get on the buses to go up into the take the trip to Colorado. And parents got on. They checked him off the list, and the kid got on. But they didn't let his girlfriend on. They were going to let the girlfriend of it, not her parents. And oh my God, they're going to leave her parents behind. So, she stayed with her parents. And now the kid's hard broken. He gets on the bus. And as the bus is pulling out of town, he can't take it. I can't leave my girl behind. So, he has them stops the bus and he gets off.

So now the scene is, he runs into the town, makes it back to where his girlfriend's house is, and they're not there. They're gone. All the houses on the street are ransacked. The doors are open. The windows are broken. And you know, everybody who's still alive is looking for anything that they can use. And he remembers that there's a motorcycle in the garage that her father owns.

So, he opens a garage and there's the motorcycle. Nobody took it because they don't know where the key is. But the kid does. It's in a jar that's on the workbench there somewhere that has nuts and bolts in it. And the dad keeps the key in a certain jar. So, the kid is frantic. You know, trying to find his girl does a comet coming. They're all going to die. He's got to get that motorcycle going. He's dumping out all these jars. And he's searching like frantic, trying to find the key. And all of a sudden, he finds the key and he grabs it as quickly as he can. Sticks it in the motorcycle and then stops. Reaches over. Gets the helmet off of the counter and the workshop there. Straps the helmet around his head. And then turns the key, starts the motorcycle, does a wheelie down the driveway. He's driving in and out of traffic at 80 miles an hour looking for his girl. And something then goes, “What the hell did they set that for? Why did they put that in the movie?”

There's all this frantic excitement of finding the damn key. And then when he does, he's got to stop and put the helmet on. Well, logic says it's a Disney movie. You know, they've got to do that for Disney films. Oh, okay. And there's child safety laws and they want to do, you know, wear your helmet. So, you're looking for a reason. But none of them satisfy you. You know, they're not defined until Reason hits. And when Reason sticks its mouth and voices its opinion, you go, oh my God. And you know, indefatigably, that's the reason. And you stop looking. And so, when Reason says, “It's a stunt driver. It ain't the kid on the bike.”

You go, “Of course! That's why they put a helmet on him. To cover his head!” So, nobody can see it's not the kid. Oh, thank you Reason. So, things like that can be verified. All right, I know many of you have heard that story before, but I like it. It's a good model of what Reason is.

A question was then asked about what it is like once you get up to the emotional part of the Higher Mental Center.

Then your conscience or higher emotional center has been raised to the state of impartiality.

Subsequently, it was asked what that feels like. How would you know that you're in touch with that or have a glimpse of that?

Well, if in the intellectual center, not even a thought stands between me and what I know, the emotional part of the higher mental center, there’s no bias in me towards anything. Maybe Saul of Tarsus said in the Bible, “Things I once hated I now love, and things I once loved I now hate.” There's no bias.

And so, my wife hates me when I function from there, because she says, “What do you want for dinner?” And I say, “Honey, I don't care.” She's, “Come on. You got to pick something.”

I really don't care. Doesn't matter. It's all food. You know, we have things in our kitchen. We don't have monkey brains in there. So, you're not going to serve me that. But just about anything you pull out of there is fine and dandy with me because I'm impartial. It doesn't matter.

You know, which is the best car, which is the best baseball team, which is the best football team, which is the best political party. I suggest that if I've got a bias, I ain't functioning from my impartial part. I'm functioning from my lower centers, which are always got their opinion, got their bias, and they like blue more than they like red.

But if I'm really in the emotional part of the Higher Mental Center, then we're just all children of God and there's nobody better or worse, or I don't look down on my fellow human beings because of their color or their religions or their political persuasions.

It was then commented upon, that if you constrain yourself to only speak impartially, you may come in touch with impartiality, so even all politicians on every side would look great.

They're all doing the best they can. They're all incredible human beings. They all were born in this world, just like I was with dreams, desires. Some have succeeded in their outer world and some haven't. But that doesn't take away the fact that they're all endowed with certain inalienable rights. 

All men are created equal. All dogs are loyal. Why should I be biased? And what am I biased for? Did I ever meet Hillary? No. Did I ever meet Trump? No. So, I don't know. First hand, I believed what people told me. George Clooney didn't like him. So, I liked George Clooney. He was in the movie I liked. So, I believe, see, we're all screwed because we're biased and we're not biased from our own observations. We're biased by the opinions we've been given by other people. And that's sad.

Then it was asked what characterizes the intellectual part of the Higher Mental Center.

It’s where the mechanical part and the emotional part have combined into the higher part. As I say, God is his own third part. In between La-Ti there, the mechanical part and the emotional part, that's the only area that God doesn't have an influence on. He has an influence from the bottom Do, shoving all the animals up to us, all driven by their sexual urges. But that only can shove up to La. And the hand of God, the Do at the top is reaching down to the note Ti where he's holding on saying, I know you're stuck in between La and Ti and you can't be shoved up by my duplicating principle from the bottom any farther. And you can't yet feel the grace reaching down to you there. But if you can figure out how to get into that Higher Mental Center and get back the Reason and Impartiality that I worked into the system that you have the right to have, then you might be able to get to that note Ti  and then enter into the intellectual part where, you know, you'll understand that the name of God. I Am.

A comment was then made on linking exercises together, and whilst doing so, wondering who is in charge, looking down.

Well, you know, whatever works for you works for you. However, if I believe that there's some “thing” out there, let's take God out, I pray to Uncle Billy to solve my problems. That's, you know, kind of far from me. The Uncle Billy will do that. The answers that I need to find are probably contained in myself.

So, in reality it's the only salvation is us. You know, even Jesus said, people ask me where the kingdom of heaven is, is it lo here or is it lo there? And he said, the kingdom of heaven is inside of you. Well, since God is in the kingdom of heaven, then God is inside of me.

So, whether I call it God or I realize it's the unification of my machine, producing a higher state of consciousness, which allows me to have a reason and impartiality, doesn't matter, as long as I have that reflexive ability to seek something that can give me answers that aren't of my lower centers. Then it's a good thing.

A question was asked about self-suggestion and self-hypnosis, and if there’s anything that we need to be careful about with those things.

You know, that's an intelligent question, and I can best answer it this way. Everything that was in your mouth was self-hypnosis. Everything that you ever believed in was self-hypnosis, and yes, they can be dangerous, because we believe in things that aren't true, and we orient our life based on those untruths, and, you know, no wonder we're in the part of our lives and hadn't woken up until maybe we got some objectivity about the structure and things.

So, yeah, it's very, very, it's very horrifying to think that all of our life, we were nothing but hypnotized, self-hypnotized critters that had our own belief structures, and we thought, you know, we could read minds, and we thought that, you know, God talked to us, and we thought that we could communicate with animals, and we thought we knew about this, and we thought we had dialogue and understanding about that, and we thought that the planet Mercury made us what we were, and we took on our traits and abilities because we were born in September, and that's all self-hypnosis. Those are the belief structures that we choose to believe.

But by reading that book, you're realizing that you can actually make suggestions to your body in a useful way, in a way that's useful, and, of course, you can make suggestions in an unusual way. You can say, “I really feel sick, I really feel sick, I'm sick,” and you'd probably be throwing up in 10 minutes. If you want to make that suggestion to yourself over and over and over again.

So, self-hypnosis is just the realization that, as a man, thinketh so is he. So why not thinketh in the way I want to control the state of myself instead of letting these other suggestions that I believed control the state of myself?

Reason’s a powerful thing. I'd like to think that everybody that touches it is going to see things in the same way. Now, it's hard when their belief structures are so ingrained, like in my story and the three-story diagram. If somebody believes the snakes are slimy, and that's what they've been told, they might have never touched a snake, but that belief structure becomes so strong in them that even if they actually encountered a real snake and touched it, they might still feel it to be slimy, even though it's not.

So, it's not always easy to overcome these crazy belief structures that men have, but I would like to think that, you know, Reason is a very powerful weapon to overcome those. When I was with the Prime Minister of the Bahamas one night, we're having dinner, and he said, well, Russ, you know, all these things you say do to make sense, but let me ask you this, “Do you think that maybe we are really the children of some alien race that came to Earth a long time ago and seeded our planet, and we're really the kids in the offspring of those beings from some other world?”

And I said, “Wow, what a marvellous thought, but let me ask you this. Seeing how we have 99% the same genes as an ape, don't you think that if we would have from some alien world and some aliens that came here, that we'd have totally different genes than that of an ape?”

And he stopped, he put down his fork, he looked over at me and he says, well, that solves that problem, don’t it?

So, with the right reason we can cut through the gobbledygook, we just have to find the right reason, and unfortunately, we probably won't get it in the world that we're in because we're advertising suggested to everybody by their agenda. Me, I'd like to think if you get to know me, I don't have an agenda. I'm not trying to convince you of anything. I'm not trying to get anything from you. I'm just offering the reason that I've come to that's allowed me to be free. And I would like to think, when I offer that reason, you'll go, yep, that makes sense to me too, and you'll get a chance to be free. And I think that's our obligation in the world, is to share the truth of people. Why would you want to share what's not true with people?

A question then arose about the motivation in this work, and do we do things just because it feels good?

That's the question for the ages. What is it all about, Alfie? Well, I come to this formulation. I am like every other thing in the universe in the state of living organic life. I am trying to live up to what I'm supposed to be. If I was an apple tree, then I would be trying to make apples. That would be the ultimate aim of me. Live up to whatever the level of being I had, and I had the level of being of an apple tree, then I would strive to make damn good apples.

Well, I'm the level of a being of a human, and therefore, my obligation is to live up to what the highest potential of that being is, which is a man with self-consciousness, who is kind and tolerant and has Reason and is impartial and isn't biased or swayed by things, other than that have been verifiable and made true.

And so, I live my life based on those dictates and surprisingly along the course of it, people have come up and say, “Hey, who are you? You're different. No, we don't see you mad. We don't see you angry. We don't see you, you know, ranting and raving about this that's happened in the news or that's what's happened in life or, you know, what happened to your dog or your daughter or your trucker? We don't see you, you know, you’re different. How come you're different? What do you do?”

And then I'm, you know, initially I really don't really tell them much. I say, well, I'm just trying to be better. And it's only after their persistent questioning that I said, “Okay, well, I've read these books.” And then I shared with them what I found to be of value in psychology or The Fourth Way or In Search of the Miraculous. And then I say, “Well, if you want to learn that, I'll teach you.” And then I take them on and show them Cosmic Secrets and explain the rules and laws.

But I'm just offering them the reason that I used to make sense to me that allowed me to pursue this idea of, “I'm just trying to live up to the potential that I have.” And that potential is given to me by the state of my being and what I am. And I'm a man who's supposed to have a Higher Mental Center functioning. I'm supposed to be able to function from Reason. I'm supposed to have impartiality. I'm supposed to have a Higher Emotional Center and have conscience. And nobody would need to lock their door that lived on my street because I won't be going in there stealing nothing.

And that's just the right manifestations of a human being. And it doesn't mean I don't enjoy hamburger, or don't like a bowl of popcorn once in a while, or don't like a soda. You know, I don't have to, you know, simply eat bread and water, but I could if that was necessary.

It allows me to certainly, but I don't, what would we say? Do those things to excess? It's not about the accumulation. It's about having a proper existence. And what do I need to exist? I need a billion dollars? Nah.You know, I can get by on my five hundred twenty eight bucks a month social security and, you know, once in a while, a little help from my friends to make sure I have a few extra bucks of my soda and another case of sodas with.

But it's just about being a right guy, wanting to manifest the right way, wanting to speak the truth. And if there's something somebody asked me that I don't know, I'll be the first one to say, “I'm sorry, but I don't know that. I can't answer that question for you. I don't know about those things.”

But the things I do know about that I've verified and proved, and I've got Reason that this manifest from the higher that supports them, I will share. And there's a good chance that it's hard for people to argue or find something different unless they're really identified when they're all views, so self-hypnotized on their own beliefs, but I'm not trying to convince them. You know, it'll be very easy if you say, okay, fine. And I won't pursue the matter or try and sway them to my way of thinking, I'm a guide, not a policeman. I'll certainly give them what I believe to be true and sustainable knowledge that can affect you to change in their being. But I'm not in it to force feed anybody.

Finally, a question was asked about the unification of our machine, and if this has anything to do with conscience and higher centers.

All of life that produces a higher is always a model of unification. First particles unifying become protons, neutrons and electrons. They unify and become atoms. They unify and become heavier atoms, different kinds of atoms, and then finally molecules and then amino acids and proteins and cells and tissues that organs, then three brained “this.” Countries and cultures in the United Federation of Planets.

It's always been about the greater unification produces something higher, yet you have just the same atoms that you started with. They were just in different states of unification.

So, man's the same way. I have centers. I have parts and parts and parts, and I'm animated by this one or that one, and I'm taken over by this, or that or everything was going well, and I was doing my homework until I spotted a guy eating an ice cream cone, and then I really wanted ice cream, and you know, all these things come in and take me.

So, what is higher? Well, for me the understanding of higher was, I'm a bunch of these centers, but the higher center was the diamond's clubs and hearts. The instinctive, moving and emotional center all acting in the same place. So, it's like unification. It was like cells became a tissue. And when I wake up, it's still the same cells, but they're functioning as a tissue and not as independent parts. Or as Gurdjieff said, all the Second-Order Suns wanted to fly off and do their own thing, but the conglomeration of all the Second-Order Suns held them all in check. So, in that greater unification something higher was created.

So first I have to unify my lower centers, diamond's clubs and hearts, to get them into conscience so I can awaken. And then I have to unify my conscience and my intelligence, which then make the higher mechanical part of the Higher Mental Center, an emotional part, and then I can have Master. So, the whole journey, whether it's through atoms up or whether it's me or up, it's all just greater unification of my bits and parts. The more that is there, the higher I am. So, I want to be as unified and as one as I can.

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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. 

That’s T H E D O G  T E A C H I N G S  Dot Com.

Goodbye, until next time.