Testing the waters

Whenever a (budding) revolutionist sticks his head above line-level, he always risks revealing himself to someone in the city, to Life ("as he knows it"), due to the "reflectivity" of all such efforts and his still-inexperienced skills and talents in that regard, but that does not stifle his more-overpowering need to continue to test the world, to See All; in fact, it stimulates even further attempts to See without Being seen.

This is the source of the real essence need to break rules that the city has established - long before he arrived here - and is the beginning of something that can grow, if not unduly stifled, by being revealed "once too often!" and becoming a societal criminal of one sort or another, or worse, an overly inhibited human that has essentially lost the innate power to think for himself, do for himself, explore the world and the universe. (A pity? Perhaps, perhaps not.)

So-called, "testing the waters" is built-in to the organism, and is the need to branch out, to grow, to evolve, that society, civilization, peer and power-possessing groups seek to squelch as soon as possible, if not even sooner - by "teaching" the human what is "acceptable" and absolutely "un-acceptable".

But, testing the waters can flower into moving the nervous system above the line, and eventually out of sight, of both the city, AND Life - to become what one really IS, an Individual, Real I. Ordinary "i's" (ordinary humans, moment by moment) can only test the external world, and some become outcasts, criminals, exiles. Real I no longer needs to test the external world, but ONLY himself - that is, all that which is below or at line level in him. In this he feeds his higher nervous system, and this continual feeding gestates the "new man", and if he doesn't die physically, too soon, this New Being, which will not only outlive the death of the body, may even outlive the life of the planet that gave birth to him - or, as Gurdjieff suggested, "become immortal within the limits of the solar system."

When a Revolutionist (no longer just a rookie) has succeeded establishing a base camp above the line, he comes with nothing but his own genetic capacities, but as time proceeds, and skills mature, he develops methods for remaining above the line, even while participating in the life of the city - maintaining a home, paying bills, interacting with others, holding a necessary job - while not giving away his position as a full-fledged revolutionist observing the world from his detached position.