What are Great Consequences?
Sometimes one speaks of Being as though it were a thing in itself; as though it could somehow be alone. Yet it is never alone. It is always in relationship.
Being itself is relationship; consciousness cannot have only itself and be aware only of itself. There must be an object; and the material universe is the object in the relationship of the consciousness of God. This relationship is intact, which means untouched. It is whole. The apparent contradiction between the transcendent and immanent is embraced by the existence of both; the action of conscience is the active experience of this condition. Conscience, in other words, is actually a divine manifestation, which is why it is assigned such a high place in Gurdjieff's cosmology. It is the reconciliation of transcendence and immanence on the microcosmic level.
Only the interaction between the transcendent and the immanent, between God and the universe, creates the possibility of Being, which consciously mediates the two.
The self can’t be known without the mirror.
As one lives, one finds oneself in the middle of a great consequence. The great consequence is not egoistic, but manifest. It contains I but it cannot be I, because I in itself is already a contradiction; or, rather, an abbreviation, a contraction of Being.
So Being is not a consequence of life; one can't live, and then Be. Life is a consequence of Being; the great consequence. So first one must Be; then, one lives. Life flows as a consequence of Being, on all its levels. Life is a dependent clause of Being, whereas one usually sees Being as a dependent clause of one's own life.
It's seen upside down. Perhaps one thinks that life flows into being; that one lives here, and then one wishes to Be — one thinks that one can becomeBeing. Actually, it's the other way around — Being flows into life. There can only be life through Being. This is why life in the state of sleep was referred to as death in the Gospels. Without Being, life is equivalent to death.
It may seem as though something is coming into us when we receive an impression, and that it is feeding our Being, but rather, nothing is actually coming in or going out. The conditions are simultaneous and equal, and they exist within one another. It's the reciprocity that matters; not the action of one thing feeding another, but of both things feeding each other. So we inhabit the condition of reciprocal exchange, which arises from Being, and from which all other manifestations emanate.
Hence all of consciousness is, in a certain sense, the great consequence.
Let's take an example; paint doesn't look conscious. It's just flat stuff that lies on the surface of things. Yet paint itself is already conscious in the moment that consciousness touches paint. Paint and consciousness can't be excluded from one another as things having different properties; they contain one another. The apparent fact that they can appear quite different is an accident.
When paint takes a form, whether intentionally or unintentionally, this is also already consciousness. Every taking of form is consciousness, because there cannot be any form without the perception of form. And only consciousness can perceive form.
I respectfully hope you will take good care.