Friday, October 9, 2009

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.