on having no teeth

a bit disjointed perhaps. here's from Let Us Now Praise Famous Men by James Agee and Walker Evans:

The light in this room is of a lamp. Its flame in the glass is of the dry, silent, and famished delicateness of the latest lateness of the night, and of such ultimate, such holiness of silence and peace that all on earth and within extremest remembrance seems suspended upon it in perfection as upon reflective water: and I feel that if I can by utter quietness succeed in not disturbing this silence, in not so much as touching this plain of water, I can tell you anything within realm of God, whatsoever it may be, that I wish to tell you, and that what so ever it may be, you will not be able to help but understand it.

This echoes a familiar spiritual vista, terrain, landscape. Here's something from Ravi Ravindra's Heart Without Measure:

There is something so entirely sane, normal and lovable about Madame de Salzmann. She is overflowing with love, but there is nothing sentimental in this. She has an enormous common sense and makes room for everything and everybody – in their right place. By contrast, Krishnamurti – clearly a person of very high being – seemed to be so correct, so good, almost pious. There is such a partiality in his insistence that process must be excluded, that traditions are only traps, that thought at all levels breeds fear, that one must not have anything to do “with money, sex and all that.” I told Madame de Salzmann about a conversation I had had with Krishnaurti. I had said to him that just as a diver needs to be loaded with some heavy material to go lower down in the ocean, he should put on a belt of lead in order to come down to our level; otherwise, he is too light and cannot be in contact with the Earth, where we are.

He asked me, “What do you mean, sir? What kind of belt?” I replied, “Krishnaji, … a little meat and sex.”

He found it amusing, but refused to engage with the idea, and said, “Sir, you are too clever for your own good.”

Madame de Salzmann was characteristically generous: “You can see the inner freedom Krishnamurti has. But he does not have a science of being; Mr. Gurdjieff brought a science of being.”

While Madame de Salzmann was sitting there, Michel said, “As far as I am concerned the best advice I can give you is to stay in my mother’s darshana as much as possible.” I was struck by his use of this Sanskrit word, commonly used and understood in India; he was advising me to remain in her sight and presence, to abide near her.

the "fourth way" doesn't own enlightenment. whereas a fakir has to work for a lifetime, perhaps a monk and yogi don't have to work quite as long, and perhaps someone on the fourth way might opt for one pill, or the other. but it all queries lead back to questions of Will, Higher Bodies, and Stupid Saints. from Thomas Merton's Chuang Tzu, xxii. 3:

Nieh Chueh, who had no teeth,
Came to Pi and asked for a lesson on Tao.
(Maybe he could bite on that!)
So Pi began:
First, gain control of the body
And all its organs.
Then control the mind.
Attain one-pointedness.
Then the harmony of heaven will
comedown and dwell in you.
You will be radiant with Life.
You will rest in Tao.
You will have the simple look of a
new-born calf. O, lucky you,
You will not even know the
cause of your state.
But long before Pi had reached this point in his
sermon, the toothless one had fallen asleep.
His mind just could not bite on the meat of doctrine.
But Pi was satisfied. He wandered away singing:
His body is dry
Like an old leg bone,
His mind is dead
As dead as ashes:
His knowledge is solid,
His wisdom true!
In deep dark night
He wanders free,
Without aim
And without design:
Who can compare
With this toothless man?

an interesting parenthetical: "(Maybe he could bite on that!)." but alas, he has no teeth!

on having no head

an acquaintance has an ornamental buddha head on a shelf. for a while i've been feeling that not all of me is such a mess, just that my thoughts are like that zen monkey bitten by a scorpion - wildly out of control. if only i could be rid of the head i'd be ok. like this fellow here – a good start!

Carbon is the New Black / esoteric titillation

it's been a while. one of the benefits of having the same conversation over and over always is that i don't need to type, just copy and paste. for instance, rumi said about "the many wines" (translated by Coleman Barks):

God has given us a dark wine so potent that,
drinking it, we leave the two worlds.

God has put into the form of hashish a power
to deliver the taster from self-consciousness.

God has made sleep so that
it erases every thought.

God made Majnun love Layla so much that
just her dog would cause confusion in him.

There are thousands of wines
that can take over our minds.

Don't think all ecstacies
are the same!

Jesus was lost in his love for God.
His donkey was drunk with barley.

Drink from the presence of saints,
not from those other jars.

Every object, every being,
is a jar full of delight.

Be a connoisseur,
and taste with caution.

Any wine will get you high.
Judge like a king, and choose the purest,

the ones unadulterated with fear,
or some urgency about "what's needed."

Drink the wine that moves you
as a camel moves when it's been untied,
and is just ambling about.

thousands of wines. the reason that is relevant here is just an odd and mounting suspicion that people in any groups think their group leader has "it" and that others are far afield. this divisiveness is sometimes engaged in by group leaders as well, and sometimes, i dare say, with good reason! but the notion of relativity comes to play. thousands of wines. perhaps if you've been educated on merlot then both a pinot noir and lancers seem off. perhaps if you've been educated on lancers ... the same but worse!

from VFTRW:

[the make-believe writer of Glimpses says] i saw indeed that this possibility existed. although not yet knowing what it was, i saw that it was there. i find it hard to put into words what became more and more understandable. i saw that the reign of law, now becoming apparent to me, was really all-inclusive; that what appeared at first sight to be a violation of a law, on closer examination only confirmed it. one could say without exaggeration that while "exceptions prove the rule," at the same time they were not exceptions. for those who can understand i would say that, in pythagorean terms, i recognized and felt how will and fate - spheres of action of providence - coexist, while mutually competing; how, without blending or separating, they intermingle. i do not nurture any hope that such contradictory words can convey or make clear what i understand; at the same time i can find nothing that is better.

"you see," mr. gurdjieff went on ["went on" irritates this blogger], "that he who possesses a full and complete understanding of the system of octaves, as it might be called, possesses the key to the understanding of Unity, since he understands all that is seen - all happenings, all things in their essence - for he knows their place, cause and effect.

"at the same time you see clearly that this consists of a more detailed development of the original scheme, a more precise representation of the law of unity, and that all we have said and are going to say is nothing but a development of the principal idea of unity. that a full, distinct, clear consciousness of this law is precisely the Great Knowledge to which i referred.

"speculations, suppositions and hypotheses do not exist for him who possess such a knowledge. expressed more definitely, he knows everything by 'measure, number and weight.' ..." (source)

is there a practical value to that? i think it's a tease. i don't know if anyone's got some singular unifying vision. some group leaders met gurdjieff, some follow in the footsteps of people endorsed by gurdjieff, or de salzmann, some have a holy presence even, some follow the teachings to the letter, and some follow where the teachings have migrated. i'm not denigrating any of these - relative to my station they are all higher, as though they are all gems. figure in to that process that regardless of whatever truth they may represent or express, inasmuch as they have become representatives of a higher level than me, our interaction may elicit titillation, suggesting to my susceptible reason that the messenger who elicited the experience must be IT.

"Tell me anything you wish, my dear Grandfather. Anything you tell me will be the greatest joy for me, if only because it is you who relate it."

"No," objected Beelzebub, "you yourself ask what interests you most of all. It will give me at the present moment much pleasure to tell you about just whatever you particularly wish to know."

it is a tease because, as gurdjieff said, we simply can't see the higher, let alone measure it - i take that to mean that we can't differentiate between a sapphire, a ruby, and a diamond - i seemingly don't quite have the wherewithal to "Be a connoisseur, and taste with caution. Any wine will get you high. Judge like a king, and choose the purest, the ones unadulterated with fear, or some urgency about 'what's needed.'" does Beelzebub leave the decision to Hassein because Hassein's individuality will ask for what it requires, or will Hassein's questioning elicit a particular reply, or does it really not matter what Hassein asks about, Beelzebub certainly has an agenda regardless ...

still, avoiding any stumbling block, bennett advised:

the only practical question is whether or not we shall go on trying, supposing that i have no guarantee that my efforts will be rewarded - am i for that reason to give up trying?

this was one of the things that gurdjieff most insisted upon in his personal teaching. he reduced the whole teaching to a very simple proposition:

"a man must have an aim." he may not, can not, see beyond this life, therefore his aim in a concrete sense cannot go beyond his death. but he can set himself the aim to die honorably, that is to say, not to give up. he reiterated this whenever he spoke about aim, and he spoke about it nearly every day. the whole point is that the aim to keep on trying, to work on oneself, admits of no doubt. all philosophical and even religious questions can remain open for us but as to whether it is better to go on trying or to give up, there can be no doubt. therefore the practical issue for us does not concern what is beyond death; it concerns the approach to the moment of death. how shall i die? (source)

einie minie minie moe ... nah, you choose.

a retreat experience

sitting. noticing sensations, energetic. activity here, there. a spot in me, maybe in my chest ... how to say - it wasn't luminous or magnetic or gyrocopic or crystalline or blue, as those connotations presented themselves before being dismissed.

i remembered hearing "when it appears it is undeniable." of course i tried to test the hypothesis. but it is made of "yes."

law and order

it's been a while since i posted so here's something i wrote up long ago:

disorder prevents me from being efficient, or even competent; thwarts my social life; and keeps me miserable with a backlog of obligations.

Materiality entails being subject to entropy. Even left alone a situation "decays." Any interacting affects a situation, and if my interaction does not at least "maintain" a situation, it must hasten it towards decay.

Entropy thus exacts its due in one coin or another - either I pay in advance, like a good householder, and maintain the environment and thus benefit by harmony with it and its maintaining me (reciprocal maintenance), or I simply suffer the consequences of progressing entropy, expending extra "energy" trying to find thnigs, get things done, or just just being uncomfortable or miserable!

It seems there might be a degree of choice, whether to pay, actively, presently, upon receipt, as it were, the dues exacted by entropy. Or wait around until the dues collector, Disorder, calls to collect it in person.

I was aided by a very well-rounded book which entailed keeping a journal and exploring costs and benefits and the psychology of being a slob, and of course my journal is rife with fourth way ideas. i know that's not the whole story because my live has devolved since the point, however, for a spell my whole life got cleaned up, and it seemed that i had a glimpse of what coming under certain orders of laws entailed, and perhaps what freeing myself from unnecessary orders of laws might be. other great forces were at work in my life at the time, so i can't claim too much with regard to my own ability to deal with my disorder or even to claim to understand cause and effect, but there were certainly powerful insights in the direction of verification.

discovering alabama

Leadbelly.

I can listen to this over and over. The high-pitched harmonizing, I read, is his wife - ethereal! Are those inner and outer octaves criss-crossing, zinging all over the place? Even in the spoken word!

In this next one you can feel his voice, sung or spoken, slide between notes.


Obviously it can't be a matter of enlightenment, but I do reflect back to B'sTs' chapter Art, about our diminishing sensitivities; also about how sound vibrations effectuate "remorse." I think about inner and lateral octaves presented in Ouspensky, and reflect that I haven't a clue what that all means.

I reflect that other artists may croon and whimper and might fail to hit some mark. So I wonder to what extent his hitting such a mark is subjective, on his side or mine. Is it just another flavor of titillation?

I also muse about dervish Troov's Lav-Mer-Nokh (something like a piano) with its additional strings between the notes. And I went back to read Ouspensky recounting about the three sets of octaves, (1) a ray of creation, (2) broken down from (a) the absolute to the sun, (b) the sun to the earth, and (c) the earth to the moon (did I get that wrong?), and (3) the lateral ocatve starting at the sun, including organic life on earth as sol, fa, mi.

And I think it is getting late to learn something real.

While I'm harping on the subject, as dreadful as flitting around heaven playing the harp sounds, maybe the next order of worlds be populated by pythagorean initiates plotting the miraculous on such deceptively simple supercomputers such as harps and David's lyre? In any case, references to music are not purely intellectual, they engage emotion and moving.

Another association is Robert de Ropp describing Gurdjieff introducing a piece of music with,

This music I play you now come from Essene monastery where Jesus Christ spent from eighteenth to thirtieth year.” And in Meetings With remarkable Men he recounts, “I had been among the Essenes, most of whom are Jews, and that by means of very ancient Hebraic music and songs they had made plants grow in half an hour, and I described in detail how they had done this.

(source).

Praise Him with the sound of the trumpet; praise Him with the psaltery and the harp. Praise Him with stringed instruments and organs. Praise Him upon the loud cymbals; praise Him upon the high sounding cymbals. Let everything that hath breath praise the Lord. Alleluia. Just Kidding.

wu wei (on the sly)

so how has the Work changed? is being passive and receptive the bona fide modus of Working? what i find suspect is that the blatant change in modus is not openly discussed and subjects what might be the bona fide new modus to distortion. but then again, how would i know? without discussion, how can i tell if the gurdjieff international review's blurb (as of may, 2009) indeed represents michel de salzmann, or if it is just pimping him out to sell copies of the journal:




Dr. Michel de Salzmann
1923-2001

How To Live Simply?
“Forget all you know about the Work. Its terms are an obstacle for you now. Avoid this old reductionism. Be new. Only then can you wish with real feeling, with love.”

upon clicking on the link a slightly fuller context is available,

How to live simply?__Michel de Salzmann

The following comments by Michel de Salzmann were made at a meeting in France in June, 2001 and were later recalled and edited by members of the Philadelphia Gurdjieff Foundation group who were in attendance.

It is a big question. Let the answer come into the empty space that one must create in oneself. Trying to live simply is not the way—we don’t know how. Trying to fix it is filling the space with activity, when what is needed is to empty oneself and allow an answer to appear…

[The complete text is available in the printed copy of th[e] issue.]

Copyright © 2007 Gurdjieff Electronic Publishing
Featured: Spring 2007 Issue, Vol. X (1)
Revision: April 1, 2007

presumably eventually continuing with the excerpt from which we linked to this page:

... Forget all you know about the Work. Its terms are an obstacle for you now. Avoid this old reductionism. Be new. Only then can you wish with real feeling, with love. ...

there's numerous things that don't add up. of course the question is "how to live simply?" is dr. de salzmann suggesting: best not to sit between two stools at all!? of course he might be talking about a higher level, or he might be instead addressing the lowly level on which i find myself, or he might be talking about the Work as opposed to the Fourth Way (which appears for a certain time for a certain purpose, etc.)? tai chi maybe? who knows?! Besides, the quote likely bears directly upon the context within which it arose in 2001 and might not be meaningfully reconstituted. still, even granted that the agency that published that blurb was trying to popularize certain merchandise, doesn't it raise a red flag that anyone designates "forget all you know about the work" as representative of dr. de salzmann and/or the Foundation and/or the Work and/or the Fourth Way? why would anyone do that?

what if the magician didn't want his sheep to evolve, would he tell them they are evolving? here's a side interest that for better or worse made formative impressions on my budding consciousness way back when:

Malcolm X - Message To The Grass Roots
Delivered on 10 Nov, 1963 in Detroit , MI:
part1:

part 2:

It was the grass roots out there in the street. [It] scared the white man to death, scared the white power structure in Washington, D. C. to death; I was there. When they found out that this black steamroller was going to come down on the capital, they called in Wilkins; they called in Randolph ; they called in these national Negro leaders that you respect and told them, “Call it off.” Kennedy said, “Look, you all letting this thing go too far.” And Old Tom said, “Boss, I can’t stop it, because I didn’t start it.” I’m telling you what they said. They said, “I’m not even in it, much less at the head of it.” They said, “These Negroes are doing things on their own. They’re running ahead of us.” And that old shrewd fox, he said, “Well If you all aren’t in it, I’ll put you in it. I’ll put you at the head of it. I’ll endorse it. I’ll welcome it. I’ll help it. I’ll join it.”

…

Let me show you how tricky the white man is.

…

[As] soon as they got the setup organized, the white man made available to them top public relations experts; opened the news media across the country at their disposal; and then they begin [sic] to project these Big Six as the leaders of the march. ...

It’s just like when you’ve got some coffee that’s too black, which means it’s too strong. What you do? You integrate it with cream; you make it weak. If you pour too much cream in, you won’t even know you ever had coffee. It used to be hot, it becomes cool. It used to be strong, it becomes weak. It used to wake you up, now it’ll put you to sleep. This is what they did with the march on Washington . They joined it. They didn’t integrate it; they infiltrated it. They joined it, became a part of it, took it over. And as they took it over, it lost its militancy. They ceased to be
angry. They ceased to be hot. They ceased to be uncompromising. Why, it even ceased to be a march. It became a picnic, a circus. Nothing but a circus, with clowns and all. You had one right here in Detroit — I saw it on television — with clowns leading it, white clowns and black clowns. I know you don’t like what I’m saying, but I’m going to tell you anyway. ‘Cause I can prove what I’m saying. If you think I’m telling you wrong, you bring me Martin Luther King and A. Philip Randolph and James Farmer and those other three, and see if they’ll deny it over a microphone.

No, it was a sellout. It was a takeover. When James Baldwin came in from Paris , they wouldn’t let him talk, ’cause they couldn’t make him go by the script. Burt Lancaster read the speech that Baldwin was supposed to make; they wouldn’t let Baldwin get up there, ’cause they know Baldwin ’s liable to say anything. They controlled it so tight – they told those Negroes what time to hit town, how to come, where to stop, what signs to carry, *what song to sing*, what speech they could make, and what speech they couldn’t make; and then told them to get out town by sundown. And everyone of those Toms was out of town by sundown. Now I know you don’t like my saying this. But I can back it up. It was a circus, a performance that beat anything Hollywood could ever do, the performance of the year. Reuther and those other three devils should get a Academy Award for the best actors ’cause they acted like they really loved Negroes and fooled a whole lot of Negroes. And the six Negro leaders should get an award too, for the best supporting cast.

granted change happens, and granted that ouspensky didn't have the full deck - still, what if gurdjieff's indications of the fourth way were and are still valid - wouldn't a magician want to eradicate all that fabulous theory and instead insinuate being worked on?

Forget all you know about the Work. Its terms are an obstacle for you now. Avoid this old reductionism. Be new. Only then can you wish with real feeling, with love.

-Says Who?

Conspiratorial Folk Tales

granted i'm conspiracy-minded. but is that inconsistent with the Work? from In Search, consider:

First of all it must be realized that the sleep in which Man exists is not normal but hypnotic sleep. Man is hypnotized and this hypnotic state is continually maintained and strengthened in him. One would think that there are forces for whom it is useful and profitable to keep man in a hypnotic state and prevent him from seeing the truth and understanding his position.

There is an Eastern tale, which speaks about a very rich magician who had a great many sheep. But at the same time this magician was very mean. He did not want to hire shepherds, nor did he want to erect a fence about the pasture where his sheep were grazing. The sheep consequently often wandered into the forest, fell into ravines, and so on, and above all they ran away, for they knew that the magician wanted their flesh and skins and this they did not like.

At last the magician found a remedy. He hypnotized his sheep and suggested to them that they were immortal and that no harm was being done to them when they were skinned, that, on the contrary, it would be very good for them and even pleasant; secondly he suggested that the magician was a good master who loved his flock so much that he was ready to do anything in the world for them; and in the third place he suggested to them that if anything at all were going to happen to them it was not going to happen just then, at any rate not that day, and therefore they had no need to think about it. Further the magician suggested to his sheep that they were not sheep at all; to some of them he suggested that they were lions, to others that they were eagles, to others that they were men, and to others that they were magicians.

And after this all his cares and worries about the sheep came to an end. They never ran away again but quietly awaited the time when the magician would require their flesh and skins.

sinister? but restricted evolution is lawful according to ouspensky's account of gurdjieff's speaking about evolution (ISOTM, p. 56):

“… Changes likely to violate the general requirements of nature can only take place in separate units.

“In order to understand the law of man’s evolution it is necessary to grasp that, beyond a certain point, this evolution is not at all necessary, that is to say, it is not necessary for nature at a given moment in its own development. To speak more precisely: the evolution of mankind corresponds to the evolution of the planets, but the evolution of the planets proceeds, for us, in infinitely prolonged cycles of time. Throughout the stretch of time that human thought can embrace, no essential changes can take place in the life of the planets, and, consequently, no essential changes can take place in the life of mankind.

“Humanity neither progresses nor evolves. What seems to us to be progress or evolution is a partial modification which can be immediately counterbalanced by a corresponding modification in an opposite direction.

“Humanity, like the rest of organic life, exists on earth for the needs and purposes of the earth. And it is exaction as it should be for the earth’s requirements at the present time.

“Only thought as theoretical and as far removed from fact as modern European thought could have conceived the evolution of man to be possible apart from surrounding nature, or have regarded the evolution of man as a gradual conquest of nature. This is quite impossible. In living, in dying, in evolving, in degenerating, man equally serves the purposes of nature - or, rather, nature makes equal use, though perhaps for different purposes, of the products of both evolution and degeneration. And, at the same time, humanity as a whole can never escape from nature, for, even in struggling against nature man acts in conformity with her purposes. The evolution of large masses of humanity is opposed to nature’s purposes. The evolution of a certain small percentage may be in accord with nature’s purposes. Man contains within him the possibility of evolution. But the evolution of humanity as a whole, that is, the development of these possibilities in all men, or in most of them, or even in a large number of them, is not necessary for the purposes of the earth or of the planetary world in general, and it might, in fact, be injurious or fatal. There exist, therefore, special forces (of a planetary character) which oppose the evolution of large masses of humanity and keep it at the level it ought to be.

“For instance, the evolution of humanity beyond a certain point, or, to speak more correctly, above a certain percentage, would be fatal for the moon. The moon at present feeds on organic life, on humanity. Humanity is a part of organic life; this means that humanity is food for the moon. If all men were to become too intelligent they would not want to be eaten by the moon.

“But, at the same time, possibilities of evolution exist, and they may be developed in separate individuals with the help of appropriate knowledge and methods. Such development can take place only in the interests of the man himself against, so to speak, the interests and forces of the planetary world. The man must understand this: his evolution is necessary only to himself. No one else is interested in it. And no one is obliged or intends to help him. On the contrary, the forces which oppose the evolution of large masses of humanity also oppose the evolution of individual men. A man must outwit them. And one man can outwit them, humanity cannot. You will understand later on that all these obstacles are very useful to a man; if they did not exist they would have to be created intentionally, because it is by overcoming obstacles that man develops those qualities he needs.

“This is the basis of the correct view of human evolution. There is no compulsory, mechanical evolution. Evolution is the result of conscious struggle. Nature does not need this evolution; it does not want it and struggles against it. Evolution can be necessary only to the man himself when he realizes his position, realizes the possibility of changing this position, realizes that he has powers that he does not use, riches that he does not see. And, in the sense of gaining possession of these powers and riches, evolution is possible. But if all men, or most of them, realized this and desired to obtain what belongs to them by right of birth, evolution would against become impossible. What is possible for individual man is impossible for the masses.

“The advantage of the separate individual is that he is very small and that, in the economy of nature, it makes no difference whether there is one mechanical man more or less. We can easily understand this correlation of magnitudes if we imagine the correlation between a microscopic cell and our own body. The presence or absence of one cell change nothing in the life of the body. We cannot be conscious of it, and it can have no influence on the life and functions of the organism. In exactly the same way a separate individual is too small to influence the life the cosmic organism to which he stands in the same relation (with regard to size) as a cell stands to our own organism. And this is precisely what makes his ‘evolution’ possible; on this are based his ‘possibilities.’

but as in Matrix, in which people are depicted as preferring sleep, gurdjieff elsewhere (ISOTM, p. 38) explains with regard to the inequal allocation knowledge:

“At the first glance this theory seems very unjust, since the position of those who are, so to speak, denied knowledge in order that others may receive a greater share appears to be very sad and undeservedly harder than it ought to be. Actually, however, this is not so at all; and in the distribution of knowledge there is not the slightest injustice.

“The fact is that the enormous majority of people do not want any knowledge whatever; they refuse their share of it and do not even take the ration allotted to them, in the general distribution, for the purposes of life. …

“The crowd neither wants nor seeks knowledge, and the leaders of the crowd, in their own interests, try to strengthen its fear and dislike of everything new and unknown. The slavery in which mankind lives is based upon this fear. It is even difficult to imagine all the horror of this slavery. We do not understand what people are losing. But in order to understand the cause of this slavery it is enough see how people live, what constitutes the air of their existence, the object of their desires, passions, and aspirations, of that they think, of what they talk, what they serve and what they worship.

“Consider what the cultured humanity of our time spends money on; even leaving the war out, what commands the highest price; where the biggest crowds are. If we think for a moment about these questions it becomes clear that humanity, as it is now, with the interests it lives by, cannot expect to have anything different from what it has. But, as I have already said, it cannot be otherwise. Imagine that for the whole of mankind half a pound of knowledge is allotted a year. If this knowledge is distributed among everyone, each will receive so little that he will remain the fool he was. But, thanks to the fact that very few want to have this knowledge, those who take it are able to get, let us say, a grain each, and acquire the possibility of becoming more intelligent. All cannot become intelligent even if they wish. And if they did become intelligent it would not help matters. There exists a general equilibrium which cannot be upset. That is one aspect. The other, as I have already said, consists in the fact that no one is concealing anything; there is no mystery whatever. But the acquisition or transmission of true knowledge demands great labor and great effort both of him who receives and of him who gives. And those who possess this knowledge are doing everything they can to transmit and communicate it to the greatest possible number of people, to facilitate people’s approach to it and enable them to prepare themselves to receive the truth. But knowledge cannot be given by force to anyone and, as I have already said, an unprejudiced survey of the average man’s life, of what fills his day and of the things he is interested in will at once show whether it is possible to accuse men who possess knowledge of concealing it, of not wishing to give it to people, or of not wishing to teach people what they know themselves.

“He who wants knowledge must himself make the initial efforts to find the source of knowledge and to approach it, taking advantage of the help and indications which are given to all, but which people, as a rule, do not want to see or recognize. Knowledge cannot come to people without effort on their own part. They understand this very well in connection with ordinary knowledge, but in the case of great knowledge, when they admit the possibility of its existence, they find it possible to expect something different. Everyone knows very well that if, for instance, a man wants to learn Chinese, it will take several years of intense work; everyone knows that five years are needed to grasp the principles of medicine, and perhaps twice as many years for the study of painting or music. And yet there are theories which affirm that knowledge can come to people without any effort on their part, that they can acquire it even in sleep. The very existence of such theories constitutes an additional explanation of why knowledge cannot come to people.

“At the same time it is essential to understand that man’s independent efforts to attain anything in this direction can also give no results. A man can only attain knowledge with the help of those who possess it. This must be understood from the very beginning. One must learn from him who knows.”

significantly, following-up that earlier lengthy quote about evolution, gurdjieff reiterates or differentiates the particular nuance of evolution being considered - i doubt that it applies to merely being a good householder or being relatively healthy or rebalancing one's centers or chakras:

“In speaking of evolution it is necessary to understand from the outset that no mechanical evolution is possible. The evolution of man is the evolution of his consciousness. And ‘consciousness’ cannot evolve unconsciously. The evolution of man is the evolution of his will, and ‘will’ cannot evolve involuntarily. The evolution of man is the evolution of his power of doing, and ‘doing’ cannot be the result of things which ‘happen.’”

a story which is more sinister than the above accounts of who evolves and who comes into possession of knowledge is contained in Ouspensky's response to a question recounted in The Fourth Way, (p. 361) - perhaps a story told by Gurdjieff, perhaps not:

Q. Could you tell me the difference between two men on their death-bed, one of whom has learnt the art of self-remembering and one of whom has never heard of it?

A. No, it needs an imaginative writer to describe this. There are many different circumstances. [O.'s a smart ass, huh?]

I think I had better tell you a story. It is an old story, told in the Moscow groups in 1916 about the origin of the system and the work and about self-remembering. – It happened in an unknown country at an unknown date that a sly man was walking past a café and met a devil. The devil was in very poor shape, both hungry and thirsty, so the sly man took him into the café, ordered some coffee and asked him what the trouble was. The devil said that there was no business. In the old days he used to buy souls and burn them to charcoal, because when people died they had very fat souls that he could take to hell, and all the devils were pleased. But now all the fires in hell were out, because when people died there were no souls.

Then the sly man suggested that perhaps they could do some business together. ‘Teach me how to make souls,’ he said, ‘and I will give you a sign to show which people have souls made by me,’ and he ordered more coffee. The devil explained that he should teach people to remember themselves, not to identify and so on, and then, after some time, they would grow souls.

The sly man set to work, organized groups ad taught people to remember themselves. Some of them started to work seriously and tried to put into practice what he taught them. Then they died, and when they came to the gates of heaven, there was St. Peter with his keys on one side and the devil on the other. When St Peter was ready to open the gates, the devil would say, “May I just ask one question – did you remember yourself?” “Yes, certainly,” the man would answer and thereupon the devil would say, “Excuse me, this soul is mine.” This went on for a long time, until they managed somehow to communicate to the earth what was happening at the gates of heaven. Hearing this, the people he was teaching came to the sly man and said, “Why do you teach us to remember ourselves if, when we say we have remembered ourselves, the devil takes us?”

The sly man asked, “Did I teach you to say you remember yourselves? I taught you not to talk!.” They said, “But this was St Peter and the devil!” and the sly man said, “But have you seen St Peter and the devil at groups? So do not talk. Some people did not talk and managed to get to heaven. I did not only make an arrangement with the devil, I also made a plan by which to deceive the devil."

of course folk tales illustrate particular aspects of a teaching and are not necessarily crafted for transplantation. still, in the latter story the students were being tricked despite their best intentions and even efforts.

for instance, what if the devil found out that tibetans learned that saying prayers would save the world - so the devil invented and introduced a prayer wheel, just spin it and you don't have to pray! i don't know how to articulate this thought just yet, but that's what blogging is for - as i can tell by all the other blogs around me (to the right and to the left).

about concerning subudjieff?

i don't endorse this, but here's from Bennett's Concerning Subud, published when Bennett was introduced to Subud and for a while championed it, before finding it somewhat lacking. It is from Chapter 2, "A Personal Approach," from undiscoveredworldspress.com/concerningsubud

1. Gurdjieff

In the present chapter, I shall give an account of the experiences that led me by the end of 1955 to expect that in the near future an important event connected with the New Epoch was to occur in England, and that this event would be heralded by the arrival from the East of a man endowed with special powers.

The story begins with my return to Gurdjieff in July 1948, after twenty-five years of separation. At our first meeting, he asked me to read three times the Ashiata Shiemash chapters of All and Everything—then still in manuscript form—adding that these were most important for me. Later, he returned to them often in conversation, and from his explanations it was clear that he regarded the awakening of Conscience in the soul of man as the only hope of achieving the 'Harmonious Development of Man' which was and is the aim of his system.

Here it is necessary to add a few remarks upon Gurdjieff himself. He was a real teacher—that is, one who brought an original lesson that he himself had learned from some higher source. Gurdjieff was no mere syncretist who weaves, more or less skillfully, into a single thread, strands taken from many older traditions. It is true that nine-tenths of what he taught could be traced to known sources—Greek Orthodox monasticism, Sufi mysticism, the Kabbalistic cosmology, neo-platonism, the Areopagite, Pythagorean and Egyptian numerology, Buddhist and Lamaist psychology—to name only a few of the best known—and that his psychological exercises, including his remarkable rhythmic movements and ritual dances, were mostly of Moslem Dervish and Central Asiatic origin. But, when all that is derived from the past has been accounted for, there remains in Gurdjieff's system a residue of authentic innovation, not so much a specific doctrine as a new point of view that breaks with the past and sees beyond the disputes that have divided the religions of the world for the past thousand years. Gurdjieff points the way to the New Epoch, even though he himself may not have been permitted to enter the promised land.

Who and what Gurdjieff himself was, has always been an enigma. Those who were closest to him were the most certain that they had never understood him. I myself met him for the first time in 1920 at Kuru Tcheshme, the palace of Prince Sabaheddin of Turkey on the Bosphorus. Later I spent a short time at his Institute at Fontainebleau in France. I saw much of him at the end of his life, and was with him for the last time a few days before he died. I have read his unpublished
autobiographies—for there are more than one—and I have heard stories of his early life from members of his family, and of the period before 1920 from friends who had known him since the early years of this century. Each person gives a different account of him. He is already a legendary figure—the hero or villain of fantastic stories connected with the Dalai Lama, Stalin, the Emperor Nicholas II, Hitler and George Bernard Shaw. Some say he was admitted to a hidden brotherhood in Central Asia, whose secrets he stole in order to set himself up as a teacher in the West. I am sure that all such tales are wide of the mark. The mystery of Gurdjieff was much deeper than sham occultism or political intrigue. He made upon me the impression of an exile from another world who must always be a stranger in any company. There is undoubtedly much autobiography in Beelzebub's Tales to his Grandson, and when asked outright if Beelzebub was a portrait of himself, Gurdjieff often hinted at an affirmative reply.

I am not concerned here to make an assessment of Gurdjieff or his teaching, but only to suggest that he must have foreseen the coming of Subud and even drew in Ashiata Shiemash a picture of the messenger who was to come in our time. [*cf. All and Everything, pp. 347-90. Gurdjieff explained that these chapters are prophetic and that Ashiata Shiemash the Prophet of Conscience was still to come.] Apart from the predictions made in his writings, Gurdjieff in the last months of his life referred many times to his own imminent departure from this world and to the coming of another who would complete the work that he had started. He even said once that the one who was to come "is already preparing himself a long way from here" (i.e. from Paris). At another time, in 1949, he gave a clear indication that his pupils should seek for links with the islands of the Malay Archipelago. I must say that I did not at the time believe that Gurdjieff was soon to die or that the coming of the promised Teacher would occur in my own lifetime.

It will, therefore, be understood that after Gurdjieff's death in 1949, many of his followers [*cf. Kenneth Walker's Venture with Ideas, the last pages [which I happen to have with me today, go figure - the reference is following G's death Walker and A., are discussing how G's stories deliver the essentials and nothing more and A. stated "'if G had meant us to try to get into touch with those from whome he obtained his knowledge, after his death, he would have left us more explicit instructions than are to be found in his book. As he has given us nothing on which we can act, we must conclude that he did not intend this.' 'Then you feel as I do," [Walker] said, 'that the whole thing is finished.' A. nodded his head, hesitated and then added, but in so low a voice that I had difficulty in hearing him, 'Unless, of course, some move is made by them.'"] awaited the coming of another teacher who would take up the work that Gurdjieff had left unfinished.

2. Alice Bailey and the Arcane School

...

i feel so suggestible - how can one help but believe what someone says? especially someone who is so senior to one's self. in ISOTM someone asks how to recognize a false school, and G. says that's not possible and a waste of time anyway. still, for Bennett to pretty much accommodate Gurdjieff and Bailey and Blavatsky and the Tibetan Masters in just a few breaths seems suspect - at least since I've come across some Maitreya'ey conspiracy notions some months ago.

but to keep focus on my point here - people were on the outlook for some successor or furtherance of Gurdjieff's teaching. Mme de Salzmann provides in the preface to Views From the Real World (p. viii):

Before he died, Mr. Gurdjieff sent for me to tell me how he saw the state of affairs and to give me certain instructions: “Publish as and when you are sure that the time has come, Publish the First and Second Series. But first of all, the essential thing is to prepare a nucleus of people capable of responding to the demand which will appear. “So long as there is no responsible nucleus, the action of the ideas will not go beyond a certain threshold. That will take time . . . a lot of time, even. …”

.

don't give up "ouspensky"

From Bennett’s Gurdjieff: Making a New World:

So far as I am concerned this material, which Ouspensky used for his own teaching in the years from 1922 to 1940 when he had his groups in London, constitutes the most valuable corpus of ideas and methods that I have come across in fifty years of searching. Nevertheless, something essential was missing. Not only did Gurdjieff say nothing – or at least nothing was reported by Ouspensky – about his work in Central Asia and the aims that he had set himself in coming to Russia; but he gave the impression that the work depended exclusively on personal effort that each man had to make for himself. The idea, which is so important in Christian doctrine, of enabling Grace, without which work on oneself is impossible, was never mentioned. Nor was the Sufi notion of baraka, which refers to the same supernatural action that must be transmitted from person to person. I have no doubt that Gurdjieff was fully aware of the importance of this action because he spoke to me personally about it only five years later at Fountainbleau.

Bennett continues:

How did it come about that Gurdjieff gave out such an incredible wealth of ideas and teachings on almost every subject of interest on the transformation of man, and did not refer to the key to making it all work, the transmission of higher energy or baraka? I believe that the explanation is to be found in what Gurdjieff wrote about in his original plan to set up his Institute in Tashkent. His aim was not to initiate an action, but to study people of many types in order to find a way to help them to liberate themselves from the universal disease of suggestibility, which makes them ‘believe any old tale.’ If people came to him and were ready to work with him on his own terms, but without losing sight of their own aim, they could profit from the contact. ...

In Witness (p. 129) Bennett shares :

I said to Ouspensky: "I am sure that his work can lead to the attainment of Consciousness and Immortality, but I am not sure if I can reach it myself. The more I learn about myself, the les do I seem able to achieve anything. In fact, in the last year I have gone back rather than forward."

... He sighed deeply, and said: "You say that you are sure that this work can lead to consciousness and immortality. I am not sure. I am sure of nothing. But I do know that wee have nothing, and therefore we have nothing to lose. For me it is not a question of hope, but of being sure that there is no other way. I have tried too much and seen too much to believe in anything. But I will not give up the struggle. In principle, I believe that it is possible to attain what we seek - but I am not sure we have yet found the way. But it is useless to wait. We know that we have something that has come from a Higher Source. It may be that something more will come from the same Source."

(typing that i'm even more struck about what Ouspensky said he would not give up! - of course i know that a couple of paragraphs cannot do justice to the vicissitudes of Ouspensky's daily efforts and lack of efforts and even taking a break, but still, I associate reading somewhere that following Bennett's tremendous exertions Gurdjieff told Bennett to rest but Bennett not resting until eventually when he did he found that what he needed was to be passive) and (p. 196):

[Ouspensky] went on to say that nothing new can be found by intellectual processes alone, and that there is only one hope: that we should find the way to work with the higher emotional centre. To this he added the sad comment: 'And we do not know how this is to be done.'

(not that Ouspensky was seeking by intellectual processes alone - Ouspensky's response was to a theory of higher dimensions set forth by Bennett; nonetheless, the response is telling. especially as Bennett did try to relate to Ouspensky about miraculous experiences at the Prieuré, but Ouspensky was not particularly open or interested. Bennett's constant deference to Ouspensky was as if Ouspensky was on a decidedly higher level. Still, it is hard to imagine that Ouspensky was utterly baraka blind. I don't know about his pillow-talk with Mme. Ouspensky, but while it was Ouspensky's ideas, it was her presence that animated the Ouspenskys' venues; also, later, to Bennett she alluded to some other quality, indicating,

Since Mr. Gurdjieff went, I have been waiting for someone to come. I still wait, but he has not. Perhaps he will not come in my lifetime." She asked [Bennett] some questions and then said: "If a new teacher comes, how do you know you will recognize him?" [Bennett] replied that he would bring something entirely new and that we should recognize it because we had been prepared by Gurdjieff. She did not wholly approve of what I said, but wouldn't disclose her own thoughts.

notably, according to James Moore it was Mme. Ouspensky who admonished students wont to sit still, "We don't meditate!"

still, while entertaining positivist notions of negation, according to B'sTs:

The Very Saintly Ashiata Shiemash taught nothing whatever to the ordinary three-brained beings of the Earth, nor did he preach anything to them, as was done before and after him by all the other Messengers sent from Above with the same aim. And in consequence of this, none of his teachings, in any form whatsoever, passed from his contemporaries even to the third generation there, let alone to contemporary beings.

kill the rabbit

i came across this in J.G. Bennett's "Journeys in Islamic Countries," Vol. 2, which seems to me likely to be the inspiration behind one of the many famous scenes in a classic movie:

The Inspector would not let me go inside the tombs, and he and the gendarme stood with their guns drawn. It was afterwards confirmed to me by the Railway Inspector that not only wolves, but tigers also, have been seen in these tombs, and that visitors were attacked not long ago.

All that we saw were a couple of hares hopping up the ancient streets, a vulture on the Ziggurat as we first came up and many lizards. I am really curious to know whether the story of tigers, told me so seriously, is to be taken seriously.

while we're at it:


and echoing fritz peters' account of "innerly free, outwardly playing a role":

[Mr. Gurdjieff] had a distinguished visitor that day — A. R. Orage — a man who was well-known to all of us, and accepted as an accredited teacher of Gurdjieffian theory. After luncheon that day, the two of them retired to Gurdjieff’s room, and I was summoned to deliver the usual coffee. Orage’s stature was such that we all treated him with great respect. There was no doubt of his intelligence, his dedication, his integrity. In addition, he was a warm, compassionate man for whom I had great personal affection.

When I reached the doorway of Gurdjieff’s room with my tray of coffee and brandy, I hesitated, appalled at the violent sounds of furious screaming — Gurdjieff’s voice — from within. I knocked and, receiving no reply, entered. Gurdjieff was standing by his bed in a state of what seemed to me to be completely uncontrolled fury. He was raging at Orage, who stood impassively, and very pale, framed in one of the windows. I had to walk between them to set the tray on the table. I did so, feeling flayed by the fury of Gurdjieff’s voice, and then retreated, attempting to make myself invisible. When I reached the door, I could not resist looking at both of them: Orage, a tall man, seemed withered and crumpled as he sagged in the window, and Gurdjieff, actually not very tall, looked immense — a complete embodiment of rage. Although the raging was in English I was unable to listen to the words — the flow of anger was too enormous. Suddenly, in the space of an instant, Gurdjieff’s voice stopped, his whole personality changed, he gave me a broad smile — looking incredibly peaceful and inwardly quiet — motioned me to leave, and then resumed his tirade with undiminished force. This happened so quickly that I do not believe Mr. Orage even noticed the break in the rhythm.

When I had first heard the sound of Mr. Gurdjieff’s voice from outside the room I had been horrified.… Now, leaving the room, my feelings were completely reversed. I was still appalled by the fury I had seen in Gurdjieff; terrified by it. In a sense, I was even more terrified when I left the room because I realized that it was not only not “uncontrollable” but actually under great control and completely conscious on his part. I still felt sorry for Mr. Orage.

and, besides gurdjieff - monty python correspondences, there's on one hand, VFTRW p. 173:

From the most ancient times through experience of life and wise statesmanship, life itself gradually evolved fifteen commandments and established them for the good of individuals, as well as for all peoples. If these fifteen commandments were actually in us all, we would be able to understand, to love, to hate. We would have levers for the basis of right judgement.

and, on the other hand,
that is, mel brooks.

confusion

for days i've been meaning to write about a topic or another. everything i'm about to write is tempered by a web search and finding something more comprehensive, sophisticated, and sometimes even scholarly already extant. but more than that ... my lone cry to make sense of the contradiction between what had been "the fourth way" and the legacy transmitted through mme de salzmann seems to be developing somewhat.

i've outlined some of the topics I'd like to cite and round up, and am haunted that that consistency might be a very formatory manifestation of the intellectual center.

it will change and maybe won't ever get written! but so far it includes ...

--desalzmann creating a nucleus

--bennett et al looking for the next teacher and baraka

--bennett on baraka

--sophia wellbeloved's toothsome morsel

--"there will be facts" a la ouspensky, this force from higher is real

--on one hand it acts on a "chemical factory"

--the work starts on a higher level; staircase, distrust in teacher, brute force missing the mark, only conscious labors count

--on another hand there's paranoia and conspiracy, to the tune of telling having the sheep guard themselves telling them they are "men" and finding nothing crystallized

--sophia wellbeloved's article in the journal of contemporary religion equating gurdjieff's teachings with love a la subud

--frank sinclair's helpful and interesting context, which, however, ignores the elephant in the room

--the energy is real

--the fourth way being transient as recounted by ouspensky

--what "the ways" "bring," and "aim"

--so with regard to the seemingly mathematical precision of the "fourth way" - physiology, psychology, alchemy, laws - what is subject to change? has the fourth room been vacated?

--nicoll and gospels, rumi

we now return to the regularly scheduled monologue, already in progress

of course when i speak i can't help but get existential, yet i don't wear everything on my sleeve. i don't talk about the Work, per se and rarely use the g-word - mister g., that is. but speaking with a friend i related certain frustration and he responded something about the goal not being about reaching some enlightenment, but about the experience. he also commented that he'd be content to have a moment of ... contentment! he's right but there's something he does not know. and he hasn't been bitten by this gurdjieff bug. he doesn't know that something urgent is underway. it has to do with why we are here, fulfilling some cosmic function, and creating a soul!

this comes to mind, from bennett's "spiritual psychology":

... this search is not compulsory; we can fulfill our obligations without the peculiar scrupulosity that looks for something more than doing what we are commanded or required to do. this does not quite express what i mean. suppose you speak to a friend about spirituality and he says: "i have no time for all that nonsense. i try to do my duty as a father and as a good citizen. i go to church because i think it is right, an as far as is reasonable in our present age, i keep the commandments. if i tried to do anything else, i should be neglecting my plain and obvious duties which take up all my time and energy." now, you could not tell your friend that he is all wrong; that there is something behind all these duties that he should be looking for. it would not be fair; and, in his case, it might not even be true. at the same time, it might be quite different for you, and you would be most acutely aware that you have problems that he knows nothing about. those problems - if they are genuine - are spiritual problems...

in buddhism a great importance is placed on sangha - the spiritual community. back in buddhist school we recited "sentient beings are numberless, i vow to save them all; the teachings are infinite, i vow to learn them all; passions are endless, i vow to extinguish them all; the buddha-way is inconceivable, i vow to attain it." but how would that sound to anyone outside the sangha? crazy, huh? so what could i tell this friend? in the course of that conversation i didn't want to talk about gurdjieff ideas. i never want to denigrate ideas and subject them to ordinary frivolous debate by people like myself who have a formatory opinion about everything. obviously i would prefer to try these ideas on for size, plumb and probe their depths. but privately. between me and my internet.

that does not mean i don't want to interest him, to hook him, to become a "fisher of men" perhaps. what could i say? in the course of conversing i tried to explain that my frustration was "why strive for something if you already have it?" i asked in reference to experiences of energy i have constantly which people supposedly work for. i was surprised at the pith of what i had said, such a fundamental work proposition.

the phrase informs my question more than might be apparent. i do not think i have to work for energetic experiences - they have been given to me, i believe they are within reach and that yes, i can do to the extent that i can elicit an energetic experience by attending to bodily sensation for a moment. so what would i work for? to make it more lasting? maybe. deeper? maybe. more meaningful? maybe. to see myself? maybe.

once in my zen days i sat empty and still and straight and could have continued sitting for another hour. "oh no, don't be attached, this great experience is a distraction" i counseled myself, and shook off the samadhi and continued sitting. now i know that sitting through samadhi must be important too! but i find that not much has changed - from my own exile i resent and distrust what purports even sacred experiences, still holding out for an accounting, still demanding it dumb down to the coarseness and cumbersome nature of my intellect.

i could end with that. it's got a nice closing note. but i'm reminded of another story, some hasidic tale i barely remember even the gist of, and maybe i've got it all backwards - some cantor prayed and made quite an impression on the rebbe - maybe it was on yom kippur for salvation for his community. the cantor told the rebbe that he was beseeching god on the basis of what happened in the holocaust. the rebbe replied, "on that basis you could beseech much more." hm - we bargain with the devil, but people don't usually discuss bargaining with god. except for hasidim. is holding god or life or the world accountable really misplaced? and what am i asking accountability for - that i'm disappointed for how things are working out? and what am i - a dirty messenger making his way past knights and gentlefolk and galleries and dining rooms, gaffe'ing and bumbling, with a message for the king? perhaps the king would even recognize and address me ... "get out!"

nicoll - self remembering IS the goal

here's something which addresses another purpose and function of self remembering. nicoll affirms the existence of a higher state, and coming into contact with it as our goal.

Nicoll, Commentaries, page 898:

Enough has been said to shew that Self-Remembering does not mean always to remember your negative self. In this connection I will give you one definition of external considering and its meaning. It was said on one occasion at the early Groups that external considering means to forget oneself and to think what the other wants, and it was added that in this way two results will follow. The first is that one can help, and the second is that one gets help. But if you really come to think about the whole question you will see that all real Self-Remembering is simply forgetting yourself, your ordinary self, your ordinary negative 'I's, your ordinary forms of internal considering, and all the rest of it, and feeling certain that some further state of yourself exists above all this personal uproar that takes place all day long in each one of you, with which you keep on identifying, and when the Work says that we have Real 'I' above us you must understand that this act, so to speak, of separating from False Personality, deliberately at some moment every day, is designed to make it possible for us to come in contact with the first traces of Real 'I' which is already there and which is our real goal.

tom waits got soul

to perish like a sheep - why remember?

why remember myself?

1) chemical transformations ...

remembering myself is the first conscious shock. the first conscious shock facilitates further digestion of food, air, and impressions, resulting in the production of higher substances. although lower centers work with coarser substances and energies, higher centers need to work with higher energies. so it would seem that allowing these energies to be further digested would facilitate the workings of these higher centers. on the other hand, higher centers are already functioning. i don't recall any mention that they are running on empty. there are also arguments about wrong use of centers, functions, and energies, and related economizing. certainly i want better health, vitality, sharpness.

i recall something about substances that make up bodies ... is that a long way off? i don't remember what that's about. perhaps i need to read more. in any case, people act as though just by accumulating higher energy that they are on the road to immortality. but no doubt i'll have more to say about that one day.

2) know thyself ...

a barrier to the work is that i think i am one and have the capacity to do what i want. the only way to see that this is not so is by trying to put that to a test. struggle. perhaps see that parts of what i took for unity might be set in opposition.

so? that only becomes meaningful if/when i realize there is something that i do not have that i really want. what do i want? why? how much? what if i don't particularly care, can the Work be my hobby? obviously that brings me back to what i including in a prior entry, "perish like a dog":

on a fourth way forum one participant indicated that gurdjieff said "Without aim, man no better than dog." (i haven't verified that gurdjieff said but don't particularly question it).

i've been hoping that as a result of some preliminaries that some innate question would emerge or mature. i even figured i'd awaken to the "terror of the situation." indeed, i might have caught a glimpse of that just over a year ago - worth reflecting on. also worth reflecting on whether i have verified anything at all.

* * *
i recognize that those are in an odd order. normally the existential query would precede the technical "how to." wasn't it recounted in ISOTM that gurdjieff told ouspensky et al. that G. and the seekers once made a sheep conscious? the astonished group asked gurdjieff what they did with that creature, and gurdjieff responded, of course, that they ate it.

the reason i'm asking is that the proposition "remember myself" doesn't seem all that important to me right now. i'm thinking aloud why it is important.

depression

here's a response i contributed to a thread on a fourth way forum recently (I'll tweak it to make it appropriate for posting here):

A recent experience provided me with an insight on my general state which I think is well characterized by Nicoll's commentary on depression (I'll copy that to the end of this post). I might call my state vexation as well as depression because there is definitely an anxious component.

What has not worked, for decades, was sincerely trying to look at, weigh, probe, understand, work with, or work, against my depression. I've thought about multiple I's, I've tried to refrain from identifying with the state, I've variously relaxed or kept busy. Indeed I've noticed that despite being overall in a negative state that one or another center were not altogether negative (but still, my general experience was overwhelmingly negative); I'd altered my posture to see if negative emotional states would dissipated (mostly not); I've spent time with people in the Work, and of course immerse myself in Work ideas – I welcome such interruptions to my trend of experience, but invariably return to familiar territory. I had not followed-up on Nicoll's exacting attributions of which parts of which centers give rise to certain flavors of depression, but wonder if my own making such distinctions would be part of my problem, given my type and experience – I have no doubt that my esoteric interests and pursuits offer me relief, but at the same time I wonder if they morbidly focus me on suffering.

Maybe it is also worth noting in this blog, that people's well-meaning advice almost always comes across as patronizing. as though I hadn't thought about and tried some sort of supplements, exercises, keeping a journal, observing, separating, or whatever. Is reacting by giving a formatory remedy just a manifestation of discomfort? Or posturing as enlightened and superior to the state I find myself in? I said "almost" because some people meet depression eye-to-eye, they recognize and validate the experience before proscribing a remedy. In any case, yes, I've observed how well-meaning advice rankled! But ultimately nothing advised address my condition.

Recently, after spending time with people in the Work, I rode the subway in my usual state of anxiety; upon exiting I saw fat snowflakes falling and I experienced a moment of pleasure. After a moment my normal vexations returned, and I noticed my eagerness to abandon the pleasurable experience in favor of anxiety's clamor. I continued walking and it continued snowing and, having glimpsed both experiential possibilities, I walked very aware of a genuine experiencing of pleasure while guarding against giving myself over to my habitual negative state. For once I noticed that there was not a continuum of experience that was being swayed towards one pole or another; rather, I saw pleasure as something generally less insistent but perhaps more available than I had suspected, even at the same time!

As the inquiry proceeded the insight continued to materialize: Perhaps I forfeit pleasures because pursuing my anxieties seems more urgent or sincere. AS THOUGH THERE'S A MORE URGENT OR SINCERE "I" TO BEGIN WITH! Now, having been directed to Nicoll's relating about "utter integrity" and "noble fellow" (below) I recognize my own "sincerity"! But more than that, perhaps what I had been doing under the guise of looking caringly into my suffering was actually cultivating it! And neglecting what?

This is a new insight for me and I hope it alleviates some of the suffering which characterizes my life. My approach lately is that when there are moments of pleasure I try to affirm them, even just saying "yes"; and when anxiety arises I try to frame my inquiry more detachedly as though wondering how long it will take to pass and where it will go so that I should not mistake it for "me" – indeed, it is just one of multiple I's and I no longer want to seat him at the driver's seat or to coddle him as my favorite darling.

The pure logician on this list will object that pleasurable I's are just as fictitious as suffering I's. However, a general negative state is neither nutritious nor conducive to Work, and it accords to the principle of Mullah Nassr Eddin, "The-very-greatest-happiness-consists-in-obtaining-the-pleasurable-with-the-profitable."

These work ideas relating to others themes relevant to my life suggest these insights might be other than pure imagination and wiseacring; but the proof is in the pudding. I am grateful that by chance I was not in such a stupor so that those particular fat snowflakes were able to rouse me just a bit.

I don't doubt that some such sort of negativity will continue to characterize some of my day-to-day experience but I saw something I hadn't seen, I know something I hadn't known, and upon this basis, I hope, might come understanding and transformation.

* * *

Here's quotations from Nicoll's Commentaries as posted to that fourth way forum by some participant or other:

Now let us speak of efforts on depression. Depression is not the same as being negative. There is one interesting thing about depression to be noticed -- namely, that it affects all centres, even instinctive centre. Depression is not only due to loss of hope and belief in the future, although this is a common cause. It can arise simply from making no efforts of any kind so that the centres are water-logged, so to speak, and on the other hand the state itself, however caused, is one in which the energy in centres turns sour. It can arise simply from a picture of oneself, as when one imagines one is always, let us say, successful, and finds one is not.

But whatever its cause, the state of depression must be recognized and every kind of effort made to over come it. I say EFFORT, because effort only will change the state, even the effort of doing just ordinary small necessary things. But it is the conscious effort of remembering yourself that will instantly lift you out of depression.

The reason is that it brings you into the Work "I's" -- that is, into the I's that feel the influence of the work -- and out of life I's in which the depression is centred. And here I must add that you must add that you must fight to have the Work in you. You must fight in the mind for the Work, to keep it alive, otherwise it begins to get cold."

--Commentaries - Nicoll p.95

People in the Work say, just as people in life say: 'I feel depressed', and think they have observed themselves. Well they have not. They have not begun to observe themselves. If you wish to observe what you unthinkingly call depression, you have to observe from where it arises. From what part of the machine is it coming? From which centre? For instance it may be coming from Intellectual Centre. You will say: 'How can depression originate from Intellectual Centre? Surely depression must always arise from Emotional Centre.' Well if you say that you certainly have not observed yourself. The Emotional Centre may be quite cheerful and yet you are aware of depression existing somewhere in you. Now, if you cannot get use to the idea that you are not one single, unvarying person, but a multiplicity of "I's" and so of contradictions, you will never understand. One part of oneself may be cheerful and another part depressed. "How," you will say, "can such a thing happen? I am either cheerful or depressed." In that case you think as "I" as one thing and so all along your career in the Work you will make the most elementary blunders both in understanding yourself and in understanding the Work, because you cannot see or acknowledge that you are not one but many. A loss of prestige is certainly involved here. "Noble Fellow" -- yes, but fear that this "noble fellow" is a picture. "Perfect honesty and virtue" is a picture. "Utter integrity" --yes, but I fear the same thing again. So seeing through your own bluff, as it were, you cease talking about full of nobleness, honesty, virtue and integrity.

Actually, we are quite different from our pictures -- and indeed, far more interesting. Yes, we do steal jam still. Yes, we do lie, and so on. Yet -- and this is not strange? -- you can watch people becoming old and dried up because they still nurse their dead dolls, still cling to what is not themselves, and so lose all possible contact with the essential springs of their real existence. In such a case, the Personality has conquered-- particularly with the aid of the False Personality.

You can see a great many people in this situation every day if your mental eyes are open to the inner state and level of others. It is especially interesting to watch when a person stops and pitches camp for good in this long, strange, psychological journey called the Work. They meet a small difficulty and halt and settle down. There are some interesting parables about this. And it is all because of these false pictures of themselves that they worship and cling to.

Now one source of depression is obviously these pictures. So in observing the origin of depression you must observe whether it comes from a picture that has been injured by some chance remark. Of course, you will not be able to observe the picture directly, because it is imaginary. But you will be able to observe the remark, and from that, after perhaps many years, gradually deduce the picture that dominates you and prevents you from escaping from its narrow jealous power. I remind you here of what was said recently about touchiness and noticing what makes you touchy -- a very useful and practical form of self observation.

Now return to observing depression -- as it was said, it can originate from different centres. It may for example, be due to Instinctive Centre borrowing force owing to a slight infection. It may arise from the Intellectual Centre -- and certainly often does in the case of women more than in men, but I do not know. Intellectual depression is a very well-marked form of depression and is not primarily due to the Emotional Centre. The worst depression possible originates in the Emotional Centre itself, only here again are many forms involving different parts of the Emotional Centre. Depression centred in the moving part of Emotional Centre is common enough and is merely a kind of boredom. Depression arising from the emotional part of Emotional Centre tends to violence. Depression arising from the intellectual part of Emotional Centre is dangerous because it is connected with a loss of faith in God, taking God here as the source that gives us our daily bread --i.e. our daily supply of meaning for our existences. Then there is depression coming from people giving up some of their usual interests and sources of meaning, from some wrong aim. To give up a source of meaning without having another to take its place is to tamper ignorantly with the balance of the machine. Remember, we are taught in the Work that the First Conscious Shock can be given safely -- it does not tamper with the machine. Reflect here on all that the First Conscious Shock means. Then again there is the depression that comes from allowing old stereotyped "I's" to criticize Work "I's" -- the old criticizing the young in oneself--which is an ancient theme in myths -- as Kronos or Time eating his children.

All that has been said is to show how wide self-observation must become and how silly it is to say, for instance: "I am depressed", and leave it like that. One can at least begin to ask oneself: "What 'I' is depressed?" But in this paper which is more about centres, I cannot go into this aspect of self-observation dealing with "I's". Suffice to say that "I's" live in every part and sub-division of the different minds or centres in our machines. But I will add that they may be haunted by an evil "I" that seeks to drag everything down into despair and meaninglessness. Well, watch and observe this evil "I" continually.

--Commentaries - Nicoll p.1211-1213

to perish like a dog

of course gurdjieff's expression is a put-down, but i was thinking more about it. in particular, i remember someone absurdly suggesting that a child amongst us was the least enlightened of a group! yet while a young child is more awake than most of us can ever hope to muster, s/he is indeed not fully developed.

a dog is not particularly "asleep" either. they are true and intelligent and natural. gurdjieff indicated to someone (somewhere!) that dogs recognize something in man which the dog does not have (even if we don't recognize it!).

on a fourth way forum one participant indicated that gurdjieff said "Without aim, man no better than dog." (i haven't verified that gurdjieff said but don't particularly question it).

i don't know how true it is that dogs are two-centered beings because they certainly are intelligent. but perhaps it is an emotional intelligence. after all, it is hard to imagine a dog acting against what it "thinks" is proper. perhaps that's what the pavlovian experiments were about. humans have perfected the art of separating what feels right and action or thought. if only there were such a thing as an "institute for harmonious development of man" ... but i digress ....

someone once asked gurdjieff if there's anything that survives after death. gurdjieff responded that for the person who faints when they get a paper cut, what could survive death!? dogs probably don't ask those questions.

i once confronted a friend with the assertion, "besides all this theory about suffering and friction, what about emotional pain, what about the experience of it right now, what is it?" he responded, "first of all, it is real. it is not imaginary suffering. but that doesn't have to end with that - we're three-centered beings and our intellect can lead to transformation" - or something like that. along those lines another friend, perhaps saying something she read from nicoll, once told me, work ideas are "enzymes" to digest experiences.

so i'm thinking along the lines that inasmuch as our thinking function just moves, reacts, etc., it is all in vain and our experience doesn't go as far as it might and doesn't accomplish anything.

but more than that, like my friend alluded to, the intellectual center's reconciling might have a creative potential - to facilitate further digestion of experiences and to foster the crystallization of something more. things that are "perishable" decay, but gurdjieff's teachings point towards transformation and creating something that endures. perhaps harmonization of the intellectual center with other centers fosters such processes. perhaps dying like a dog is not in itself loathsome except to the extent that it is the waste of a precious opportunity to make something for one's self.

it is difficult to imagine that ouspensky, with his prodigious intellect perished like a dog. surely he made super efforts and applied all the theory; gurdjieff did say that no effort is wasted. there's missing pieces here. but then again, even ouspensky himself was frustrated by his application of theory and how far it took him.

i thought i was done, but apparently i'm not. maybe i'll get the hang of it. i did a search for the phrase and came up with this (strange) link:

In John Bennett's Talks on Beelzebub's Tales, he recalls one night spent in Gurdjieff's Paris apartment shortly before the latter's death। There was a typical gathering of students: among them English, Americans, French, Greeks—more than fifty people assembled in a small apartment to have dinner with Gurdjieff and to listen to him speak. Gurdjieff offered a toast which in its simplicity seemed forceful: "Everyone must have an aim. If you have not an aim, you are not a man. I will tell you a very simple aim, to die an honorable death. Everyone can take this aim without any philosophizing—not to perish like a dog." "As always," Bennett recalls, "he suddenly turns the conversation to a joke and in a minute the room is shaken with laughter at some story about the peculiarities of the English. But the impression remains of the overwhelming seriousness of our human situation, of the choice which confronts us between life and death."

What seems simple, not to perish like a dog, is for Gurdjieff the most difficult aim a person can have. And making us aware of the choice between life and death, or between kinds and qualities of death, is a main concern of Beelzebub's Tales. In the Tales, however, the choice is presented in far more complex terms: we can either live our lives and die our deaths passively and mechanically, for the sole purpose of unconsciously supplying the Cosmos with required energies, whereby upon death we sacrifice our individuality; alternatively, we can live in such a way as to supply required Cosmic energies consciously, and of sufficient quantity and quality, so that death carries the potential of amounting to more than a payment of transformed energy, and we gain the possibility of becoming "immortal within the limits of the Solar System."

The choice between life and death as expressed in these terms is related to Gurdjieff's Theory of Reciprocal Maintenance, which embodies his answer to the question, "What is the meaning and purpose of life on Earth, and in particular of human life?" Like all organic life on Earth, human beings are apparatuses for transforming energies which are required for some other purpose. However, as a more complicated type of transforming apparatus than plants or animals, human beings possess some choice regarding how to supply the energies required by their existence. They can transform energy consciously or unconsciously, in greater or lesser quantities, and of varying qualities, thereby influencing the purpose and outcome of their deaths. These are among the choices of which Gurdjieff wants to make us aware in his Tales.…

if such an on-target post already exists, what is my business posting in the first place?

and if here, as in probably all my posts, my attempt to integrate ideas and experience results in unlikely intellectual interpolation and extrapolation yielding something altogether improbable (even as upon ouspensky meeting gurdjieff, gurdjieff referred to ouspensky's tertium organum as something altogether impossible), even if it does contains a grain of truth, isn't that wiseacring?