The Perfection, part 1

“The earthly, which is the outermost level of the divine design, brings about completion, so that the inner things, which are heavenly and spiritual, stand firmly on it the way a house stands on its foundation.”

—Emmanuel Swedenborg, The Last Judgment

“In any case, you must first of all be told that this same holy planet, which is called Purgatory, is for the whole of our Great Universe, as it were, the heart and place of concentration of all the completing results of the pulsation of everything that functions and exists in the Universe. 

“Our COMMON-FATHER-CREATOR-ENDLESSNESS appears there so often only because this holy planet is the place of the existence of the, in the highest degree, unfortunate ‘higher-being- bodies’, who obtained their coating on various planets of the whole of our Great Universe. 

“The ‘higher-being-bodies’ who have already merited to dwell on this holy planet, suffer, maybe, as much as anybody in the whole of our Great Universe. 

“In view of this, our ALL-LOVING, ENDLESSLY-MERCIFUL and ABSOLUTELY-JUST CREATOR-ENDLESSNESS, having no other possibility of helping these unfortunate ‘higher-being-bodies’ with anything, often appears there so that by these appearances of HIS HE may soothe them, if only a little, in their terrible inevitable state of inexpressible anguish. 

—G. I. Gurdjieff, Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson, The Holy Planet Purgatory 

In order to understand the above passage, one first needs to consider the below text, which is well known to most readers of Gurdjieff’s work:

‘The factors for the being-impulse conscience arise in the presences of the three-brained beings from the localization of the particles of the “emanations-of-the-sorrow” of our OMNI-LOVING AND LONG-SUFFERING-ENDLESS-CREATOR; that is why the source of the manifestation of genuine conscience in three-centered beings is sometimes called the REPRESENTATIVE OF THE CREATOR.

“ ‘And this sorrow is formed in our ALL-MAINTAINING COMMON FATHER from the struggle constantly proceeding in the Universe between joy and sorrow.’

“And he then also further said:

“ ‘In all three-brained beings of the whole of our Universe without exception, among whom are also we men, owing to the data crystallized in our common presences for engendering in us the Divine impulse of conscience, “the-whole-of-us” and the whole of our essence, are, and must be, already in our foundation, only suffering.

“ ‘And they must be suffering, because the completed actualizing of the manifestation of such a being-impulse in us can proceed only from the constant struggle of two quite opposite what are called “complexes-of-the-functioning” of those two sources which are of quite opposite origin, namely, between the processes of the functioning of our planetary body itself and the parallel functionings arising progressively from the coating and perfecting of our higher being-bodies within this planetary body of ours, which functionings in their totality actualize every kind of Reason in the three-centered beings.

—G.I. Gurdjieff, from “The Organization for Man's Existence Created by the Very Saintly Ashiata Sheimash:"

Gurdjieff’s writings work on many levels; some are literary, some are literal, some are allegorical, some are mythological, and some are even outright fictional. Yet these two passages covertly present two essential processes that human beings ought to undergo in their work to develop spiritual Being; and while he ultimately places them in a “location” called The Holy Planet Purgatory, the actual “location” they take place in, if rightly understood, is within the Being of an individual who works.

The Holy Planet Purgatory, in other words, is just as much a place within man or woman as is the Kingdom of Heaven. 

Part 2 of this series will be published on Dec. 3.

Warmly,

Lee

Announcing the publication of 

The Reconstruction of the Soul

The Reconstruction of the Soul is a wide-ranging investigation of symbolism in High and Late Medieval art. It includes detailed analyses of the Unicorn Tapestries at the Cluny Museum and the Cloisters in New York, as well as detailed examinations of the mysterious, erotic and bizarre symbolism in The Cathedral of St. Lazare in Autun.

Along the way, it traces the roots of Western esoteric art from Babylon to ancient Greece, revealing traditions that are still alive today, some 3000 or more years later.

The material is illustrated with photographs taken by the author on location in France and New York, as well as source material from various museums.

It will appeal to anyone interested in the symbolic transmission of the world's Western esoteric heritage.

All funds from your purchase of this book will go to support the translation of important historical documents related to the Gurdjieff tradition.

The author is currently at work on a second volume which will explore even earlier (!) influences on esoteric art and practice. Anticipated publication of this follow-up work will be late 2019.

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.

An Inner Ethic

Semipalmated Sandpipers, Hudson River, September 2108.

September 24.

Attempting to digest life as it arrives.

I’m not sure we appreciate just how much of life needs to be lived quite simply, inwardly, awaiting the arrival of life itself, from within. It’s a quiet place; a stillness that receives. All of my outwardness settles down into a gravity that has the capacity to resist its distractions.

It’s late September, and at this time of year the Sorrow always begins to flow into Being more powerfully. Time to digest the results and fruits of one’s labors; and time, also, to attempt to comprehend the essential failures, over the course of a lifetime, to meet the inner ethical demands of one’s life.

There’s a deep remorse that enters being from below—and it enters from below, even though it is a higher energy sent by a higher power than me. God can enter the house through the basement, it turns out, just as easily as He can enter through the roof. I forget this; yet God dwells with ease in all of this house I call Being. His Divine Radiance is not limited to the heavens; or, rather, it is within our inner heavens that His radiance shines most brightly, and most unexpectedly.

As a result of this Presence, there’s an inner ethic that slowly grows within Being; and it is a rooted thing, apart from myself, an ethic that draws its intelligence not just from the clouds and the sun and the rain of heaven—which are real— but from the very soil of Being itself. It penetrates; it permeates, it informs. There’s no real love present in me without the foundation of this inner ethic.

Warmly,

Lee

Announcing the publication of 

The Reconstruction of the Soul

The Reconstruction of the Soul is a wide-ranging investigation of symbolism in High and Late Medieval art. It includes detailed analyses of the Unicorn Tapestries at the Cluny Museum and the Cloisters in New York, as well as detailed examinations of the mysterious, erotic and bizarre symbolism in The Cathedral of St. Lazare in Autun.

Along the way, it traces the roots of Western esoteric art from Babylon to ancient Greece, revealing traditions that are still alive today, some 3000 or more years later.

The material is illustrated with photographs taken by the author on location in France and New York, as well as source material from various museums.

It will appeal to anyone interested in the symbolic transmission of the world's Western esoteric heritage.

All funds from your purchase of this book will go to support the translation of important historical documents related to the Gurdjieff tradition.

The author is currently at work on a second volume which will explore even earlier (!) influences on esoteric art and practice. Anticipated publication of this follow-up work will be late 2019.

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.

Being for others

 As I said in the last post, it's not enough for me to just be for myself. 

When I say, I wish to be from my ordinary parts, in a more or less ordinary (though possibly heartfelt and sincere) way, I'm more or less wishing for myself... and this action, while it may seem important (especially from my selfish point of view) isn’t enough. It hasn’t been carefully examined; and its consequences in terms of the direction my inner work takes are perhaps not properly understood.

 I don’t, in the end, wish to be for myself at all. That isn't the real point of Being. There are two essential points of Being that are forgotten on this end of the prayer, this wish for myself. That is that the wish for myself is only a beginning place, that leads me to the two much greater wishes.

The first greater wish is the wish to be on behalf of others.

 The second greater wish, which is the greatest wish, is the wish to be on behalf of God.

 If I wish to be for myself, and I keep chanting this like a mantra, deflecting back to the self-referential struggles of my own—and how this, that, and the other thing aren’t working properly in me—I may miss these other two actions, which are essential in terms of inner development.

 The idea of intentional suffering is specifically meant to help us understand the second greater wish, the wish to be on behalf of others. In particular, this wish to be on behalf of others must be an emotional wish — not just a material one, in which I want to support others materially, which is the least of the kinds of support other human beings need in the end — it is a wish to support them as other beings emotionally. And let’s face it, almost all of our efforts to support others materially run up on the rocks of the simple fact that we're rather poor at this. 

It's not enough to just feed the body; one must also feed the soul.

 Yet we find ourselves today in a society that thinks more, and harder, about feeding the body (whatever kind of food it is, whether it's bread to eat or internet pornography) than it thinks about anything else. We spend very little time considering how to feed the soul; and technological materialism is making all of mankind forget what it means to have Being for others, rather than just myself.

 The whole point of developing a wholeness of Being is that this particular understanding grows stronger legs as a result of it. I slowly learn to support others more through love than ego; more through care than self interest. This is an interesting and difficult task, because my overall responsibilities require that I maintain both ego and self interest in the process; with one important difference. 

That difference is that ego and self interest must be put into the service of myself in order that I may better serve others.

This piece of the inner landscape is complex and multidimensional. It is inhabited out of sight, and best not to talk about it with others; yet those who understand what I speak of here will equally understand how important it is to take an active, intelligent, and compassionate attitude that extends from this seed-of-a-beginning in myself into my relationship with others...

and then into the realm of a relationship with God.

Oh, my goodness. If I truly see myself, what a pauper I am in this action. I don’t perform my tasks or services well at all. 

It reminds me well of brother Lawrence, who saw continual deficiencies and understood that only God could rectify them.

Warmly,


Lee

Announcing the publication of 

The Reconstruction of the Soul

The Reconstruction of the Soul is a wide-ranging investigation of symbolism in High and Late Medieval art. It includes detailed analyses of the Unicorn Tapestries at the Cluny Museum and the Cloisters in New York, as well as detailed examinations of the mysterious, erotic and bizarre symbolism in The Cathedral of St. Lazare in Autun.

Along the way, it traces the roots of Western esoteric art from Babylon to ancient Greece, revealing traditions that are still alive today, some 3000 or more years later.

The material is illustrated with photographs taken by the author on location in France and New York, as well as source material from various museums.

It will appeal to anyone interested in the symbolic transmission of the world's Western esoteric heritage.

All funds from your purchase of this book will go to support the translation of important historical documents related to the Gurdjieff tradition.

The author is currently at work on a second volume which will explore even earlier (!) influences on esoteric art and practice. Anticipated publication of this follow-up work will be late 2019.

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.

The Reconstruction of the Soul

Announcing the publication of 

The Reconstruction of the Soul

The Reconstruction of the Soul is a wide-ranging investigation of symbolism in High and Late Medieval art. It includes detailed analyses of the Unicorn Tapestries at the Cluny Museum and the Cloisters in New York, as well as detailed examinations of the mysterious, erotic and bizarre symbolism in The Cathedral of St. Lazare in Autun.

Along the way, it traces the roots of Western esoteric art from Babylon to ancient Greece, revealing traditions that are still alive today, some 3000 or more years later.

The material is illustrated with photographs taken by the author on location in France and New York, as well as source material from various museums.

It will appeal to anyone interested in the symbolic transmission of the world's Western esoteric heritage.

All funds from your purchase of this book will go to support the translation of important historical documents related to the Gurdjieff tradition.

The author is currently at work on a second volume which will explore even earlier (!) influences on esoteric art and practice. Anticipated publication of this follow-up work will be late 2019.

warmly,

Lee

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.

A wholeness of being

 Gurdjieff frequently discussed how important it is to have a single “I.”

 I would suggest a different phrase. 

What I seek in myself is what I’d call a Wholeness of Being.

 I bring this up with a sense of irony about using the word “I” at all; whether to refer to my own opinions and ideas on the subject (and, of course, my own direct experience) or to refer to the specific question of ego and individuality.

 I’ve been working, as it happens, on a series of writings about the “wave of Being;” and in doing so, I was required to discuss the question of identity and what it consists of with my friend Paul. Paul has an incisive mind on these matters, so one cannot discuss things of this nature lightly with him; and the considerations provoked a range of questions about what identity is, where it comes from, and what it means.

 Those questions are far from resolved. Yet all of them center around intellectual analysis, and what I am interested in this morning is a wholeness of being that arises organically. This wholeness of being is directly related to what I call the molecular sense of being; yet the molecular sense of Being alone is not enough to truly understand Being as it exists as an entity. 

 There are a lot of lofty ways to approach this — we are all part of one great whole, everything is sacred, and so on. It’s all too easy to speak mostly true words like this, and even more so to indulge in sincere but mostly sentimental relationships with the ideas they present. Most of New Age philosophy and a great deal of “feel – happy” spiritual practice — which has been adopted by many formerly serious institutions such as Buddhism and Christianity — relies on the ease of these ideas, how easy they are to market and sell, how easy it is to send important when saying them, how easy it is to sign on because they're saying warm fuzzy things we like to hear.

 All of that's fine, but the organic sense of being and wholeness of being are grounded in a fundamentally different approach to life, which involves identity as a three-centered action within the inner state of a man or woman. I sometimes call this the Reconstruction of the Soul — and I capitalize that simply because a forthcoming book of mine discusses this at great length in the context of medieval art history. 

Yet philosophy, new age pondering, and medieval art history do not do the subject justice, because it isn't a philosophy.  It's an inner action that must take place within me now.

 This action reminds me quite clearly and precisely, down to the very marrow of my bones, right in this instant, that I don’t know who I am or where I am. I don’t know what will come next. This is a conscious and sensational (grounded in sensation) action that provokes a feeling of remorse and sorrow which must be pondered using the intellectual presence I bring to bear on the moment. 

These three factors combined within me to leave me with a sense of immediate mystery — not cosmological mystery related to how vast everything is and how tiny I am, and so on, but an existential mystery related to the act of existence right in this moment, as it is.

 While this action is measured through individuality, it cannot be completed through it. The word individuality itself carries contradictions, because on the one hand it means “undivided,” and on the other hand it means, more or less, “separated from others.” The ironies here are implicit, because in the first place, I am myself divided into many parts, no matter how we add things up and no matter how whole my being is, and in the second place, I am not separate from others — I cannot exist without the community that I inhabit. My ego just causes me to think I am.

 If the irony is not just implicit, but also explicit — as the above makes apparent — how do I resolve that?

 This wholeness of Being skirts the question of ego, individuality, and even the word “I” itself. It reminds me of the prayer I've been working on for many years:  There is no “I”, there is only truth. The way to the truth is through the heart.  

No one can claim to penetrate the truth of this prayer in its entirety; and indeed, I am not even close. Yet I remind myself of it every morning. 

I live within an existence that is composed essentially, without compromise, of truth. 

As I've said lately to many friends in regard to this matter, “ life arises naturally.” We need only show up and be there for it; if we inhabit the natural arising of life, gently and responsibly, with some attention and love, we can naturally fulfill our being responsibilities without tension. Of course this is an idealized version of it; we are reactive creatures, no matter what we do, and we'll have to deal with that as well. Yet this wholeness of Being, this molecular sensation and a sober emotional attitude — characterized by remorse of conscience and an intention to suffer on behalf not only of myself, but more especially of others — is a fundamental place from which life can be inhabited.

 While I respect the long-standing tradition of Gurdjieff’s prayer, “I wish to be,” I find it limiting. It weirdly sounds like Being is all about me; and nothing could really be further from the truth.  

It has a grain of truth in it, to be sure, but it is not enough to just wish to be for myself.

Warmly,

Lee

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.

A note to readers

View at Serrabone

 A special note to readers today.

 This particular post was written this morning, and not (like almost every other post in the space) weeks or even months in advance of its publication.

 This morning I had a rather intricate dream which I will not describe in detail. The essential point of it was that I was telling a group of people our body is made of very fine material.

Traditionally,  in many practices that aim to take us to some spiritually “higher” place, the body is seen as a rather coarse instrument: its senses crude and lustful, its cravings animal, the substances it excretes revolting. This is a rather intellectual and romantic formulation of a creation which has been painstakingly grown with extraordinary care by a set of creatures (molecular crystals) that have their own intentions, desires, and goals. Those impossibly tiny creatures are the foundation of our Being; and they operate at a level inscrutable to us, which contains in its entirety nothing but elements of the sacred.

What is more truly coarse is our intelligence and our appreciation of this body and what it is made of. These fine materials have the capacity to vibrate at rates we don’t understand and rarely come into contact with; yet they form what we are, and unless we begin with a deep respect for them, the place we come to in life is never enough to gain a real appreciation of what it consists of.

This should be pondered very carefully today as you go through your daily motions. We inhabit a sacred vessel which is composed of very fine material indeed; and we are to honor that as best we are able, not by some theoretical idea about it, some romantic notion, but a very careful, attentive, and intimate relationship with these fine materials we are composed of.

I’m tempted to go on, but I will just leave it at that.

I wanted to let readers interested in the treaties on metaphysical humanism know that the essay is by now very much longer than what has been published in this space. I’m taking a break from publishing it for a while, but I anticipate that sections of it will resume publication in January. Readers interested in diagrammatic models of the universe, especially those based on the enneagram, will be very satisfied with what is coming up. Those who find intellectual material of this kind ponderous will not. It’s difficult to balance the need for intelligent commentary on practice with the need for structural insight on philosophical and theological matters; I do what I can. There will always be those who are happy with it, and always those who will find it inadequate in one way or another. Thanks to those who enjoy the material, and my apologies to those who don’t.

It occurred to me that I almost never give readership updates on what’s going on personally. I just got back from a successful business trip to China, during which I felt more in touch with the finer vibrations of life than I often do. The family and children are doing well; sadly, our house is much smaller than it used to be because so many of our pets — who were for the most part acquired at the same time, some 16 years ago or so — have died in the last year or so, including (for readers who have been around long enough to remember her) the famous dog Isabel. Other notable losses have been Max, a foundling cat; Mr. Suzuki, a cat who was misidentified as female shortly after birth and went through most of his life being named Susan, even though we all knew he was male; Juliet, the reigning dowager of the family, a blue Persian who saw me through my divorce and went through a final round of heartbreaking feline senility before she finally died; and my mother’s cat Hortense, a feral rescue who spent the last week of her life with us while my mother was in rehabilitation.  

The loss of all these small but to us important lives has been sobering.

This brings me to the last note, which is that today marks my 37^th year of sobriety. Those who know me on Facebook can see the post I left there; but I wanted to say, in this space, thank you to all of those who supported me and loved me throughout the ordeal that was required for me to get sober.

Anyone who is struggling with drugs or alcohol is welcome to contact me if they feel they need some personal help in that matter.

People sometimes praise me for having been in recovery from alcoholism and drug abuse for so many years; but no praise is due. All I have ever done is try to meet my responsibilities as a human being, the first of which is not to behave in such an irresponsible manner. I’m grateful to God for the support that is been sent to me to keep me on the right track overall these decades; and I’m grateful to the people who were there to help me succeed, especially Rip, who is still alive, and Walter, who is not. I owe these two men a great deal which I can never repay.

 May God bless all of you.

Lee

Organic Compassion

Tomorrow is my 37th anniversary of sobriety. 

So, let's take a break from examining Metaphysical Humanism.

In Gurdjieff’s Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson, two of the essential conceptual components of inner life we encounter are intentional suffering and remorse of conscience. 

These two concepts are inextricably linked to one another; yet the first is individual and personal, and the second is proto-cosmic.

The distinction is as follows. Remorse of conscience arises, according to Gurdjieff, from the actual particles of God—”His Endlessness”— which penetrate the entire universe. As such, they’re a key part of the essential tissue from which reality is made; and it calls us to a mystery about reality itself: why should it be sorrowful at all? This question is emotionally deep, and does not submit so easily to intellectual analysis; yet the sensory and emotive capacities of the human organism allow us an access to this through experience, rather than hypothesis or conjecture.

If anything, this access only deepens the mystery; we can participate, but it is much more difficult to explain.

This is where the question of intentional suffering comes in. What is it?

Our theories on the matter turn out to be relatively useless. Understanding is primarily gained by intuitively, instinctively engaging in intentional suffering and beginning thereby to comprehend the reason that the tissue of the universe is composed, at its heart, of an infinite sorrow. That infinite sorrow becomes much more personal when intentional suffering is engaged in.

Now, it's true, on the surface of things folks may differ in opinion about what intentional suffering consists of. This is because there are internal and external explanations of this term; and of the two, the external one is relatively worthless, because everything in regards to suffering that takes place externally take place on this level, that is, within the physical realm that we exist in: material reality. 

Inner intentional suffering, however, belongs to the metaphysical realm, the realm of the soul. This is a realm that exists within the material but remains, in many ways, forever untouched by it; and our experiences within it, which are created not just by our thought about it, but our sensation and feeling of it, are what truly matter to us from a spiritual point of view.

What, then, of exactly the aim of these two different understandings? 

Why should we care about  remorse of conscience? 

Why care about intentional suffering?

Both of these faculties, as they develop, lead slowly in the direction of what I would call organic compassion.

Organic compassion is quite different than the external compassion which I typically manufacture for myself in one way or another. In point of fact, my external compassionate features are weak. 

The motive force beyond ordinary compassionate action is not invalid; it is simply external, more superficial.  And I think we can all see how that works in ourselves. We want to have compassion. We think about it. Compassion is a philosophically and religiously correct attitude, I want to "cultivate" it.

Allow me to point out that it’s possible to conform to all of the forms and requirements of the outward action of compassion without actually being compassionate. There is an inner level of emotional investment to compassion that involves suffering.

Swedenborg talked about this when he spoke about how human beings outwardly manage to conform to everything that is required of them, because it’s the way things "ought" to be done—while in our hearts we actually yearn for more selfish (and perhaps even cruel) forms of action in relationship. 

Every human being is a balancing act in this regard; yet if we don't see our impulses (that is, our selfish impulses) for what they are, we never bring them into question; and this allows us to exercise what appears to be compassion while actually not feeling compassionate at all inwardly. We follow the form; but when the going gets tough, it becomes selective; and true organic compassion isn’t selective.

This dilemma explains the endless instances of humanity, of all of us, where we believe in how deeply compassionate we are right up until the moment it doesn't actually suit us anymore. At that moment it’s thrown out the window, the middle finger comes out.

In order for compassion to be genuine, it has to be molecular. That is to say, it has to be built not just on my moral ideas, philosophies, theories, and attitudes towards compassion – everything society and other people have "bought" me: it has to be deeply learned, within the tissue of the body itself, from a sensational and emotional point of view. Both my molecular structure and my feelings must begin to understand what compassion are.

To some extent, this is the whole point of why Gurdjieff introduced the ideas of remorse of conscience and intentional suffering. They are the forces through which organic compassion can begin to grow into our Being. 

And that has something to do with the cosmological structures we are a product of, which are under discussion in the posts on Metaphysical Humanism.

Warmly,

Lee

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.

The Inherent Wave of Being—a Treatise on Metaphysical Humanism, part XVII- God's Fourth Way

Students of Gurdjieff’s Fourth Way will, if they think about this for a few moments, see the very clear analogy between the three forces of Love, Intellect, and Matter, the idea that they produce existence as we know it, and the concept of a “Fourth Way.” The Holy Trinity, acting in perfect concert in its manifestation as Love, Intellect, and Matter, produces the universe as a “Fourth Way” for the manifestation of God — a way in life, that is to say, a way of existing and being. 

The relationship is not a coincidence. Think about it carefully, because what it tells us is that the entire universe is God’s Fourth Way. 

We are participants, in other words, in God’s own search for Being.

Of course the idea that the universe is a vehicle for the self-disclosure of God is hardly a new one. It is, in fact, ancient; yet understanding it from the perspective of Gurdjieff’s Fourth Way, a way of self disclosure that combines the three major aspects of self in a harmonious effort that produces a “superior” entity consisting of the three ways, is new. Another compelling aspect of this reasoning is that it conforms to the emergent properties of the material universe and all of its manifestations. Gurdjieff’s Fourth Way is, in its own right, an emergent entity, even though it has not been recognized or referred to as such until now.

 When we refer to the Fourth Way as an emergent entity, what we mean is that the collective action of its constituent parts produce a more sophisticated, more intelligent, and more empowered agency of Being than any one of the constituent parts can be said to produce when it operates on its own. The Fourth Way is, furthermore, emphatically defined as a way in life, that is, a method of investigation and self-disclosure (whether of our own self or a higher one) that is undertaken at the same time one fulfills one’s day to day responsibilities. It does not replace ordinary responsibilities; and it does not require a cloistered existence, withdrawn from engagement, in order achieve its ends. Rather it relies on the engagement itself to produce the material necessary for self discovery and self-disclosure.

 Think on this as we move forward.

Warmly,


Lee

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.

The Inherent Wave of Being—a Treatise on Metaphysical Humanism, part XVI—The Law of Matter (Physical Existence)

 While this law seems to be the most important law to mechanistic rationalism, it is actually the third and least important law, whose very existence itself depends on the action of the first two laws.

This is because without divine love (emotion) and divine intellect (mind, or intelligence) there can be no physical existence. Matter only begins to exist once love has emanated the force (energy, or quanta) necessary for its aggregation and mind has organized it through perceptive relationship (which distinguishes between wave and particle functions.) The existence of force and its organization into material give birth to the third law, which is physical existence itself.

Although he put it in somewhat different terms, Swedenborg argued extensively that physical existence is an inferior entity, and this is the reason why. It is a consequent, not originating, law of creation. The perception of it as the originating law, which is the norm in today’s world, is fundamentally incorrect because it leaves out the forces that both bring the law into existence and allow it to be perceived.

Metaphysical humanism perceives law of matter and physical existence as a subordinate law.  Invoked alone and left to its own devices, this law creates a world much like the world of Plato’s prisoner, or the world of Maya (illusion) as perceived by Hindus and Buddhists. It is a world of appearances that has been stripped of the essential meaning imparted by love and wisdom. Although this world has the potential to manifest with nearly unbelievable power, it is completely stripped of meaning and becomes a mindless, purposeless creation.

Presuming this were actually the case leads us to some interesting speculation. Why does mindfulness and purpose exist, if the universe is mindless and purposeless? Can raw accident impart properties to matter by random strokes of luck, so as to produce the complexities of life, of cellular structures? Everything that we see and understand with our own perception and intelligence tells us that this is not so. Matter cannot even be a matter unless there is an agency and an intelligence to perceive it as matter. Without intelligence, nothing can be perceived, and no matter how solid and material the universe is, it ceases to exist. 

Yet matter does exist. It exists because of the functions of the other two laws that act in conjunction with it to create a whole universe. 

 This whole universe which is created by the action of love, intellect, and physical matter gives birth to a fourth entity, existence, which is then subject to a further set of laws.

Warmly,

Lee

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.

The Inherent Wave of Being—a Treatise on Metaphysical Humanism, part XV—The Law of Intellect (Mind)

 The law of intellect rules the property of discernment within all of the universes in the multiverse. It is what allows materiality to discriminate and differentiate; and this is the point upon which perception itself is predicated. Without intelligence, there can be no perception; and without perception there is no Being, because Being relies upon perception. What is not perceived cannot Be; what does not perceive can equally not Be. Hence we have a situation in which Being itself, which is demonstrably in existence and which we participate in,  cannot exist without the law of intellect.  One might arguably have matter alone which “somehow” existed in the absence of being, but once again, without an agent to perceive it, even the idea of existence is absent. So the law of intellect is essential to the existence of the universe and of the action of both Being— the material existence of what is — and agency – the action of wish and caring.

 In discrimination, intelligence chooses. If we wish to draw an analogy to the collapse of the wave/particle function, which exists as a superimposed state (both wave and particle existing within the same energy state at the same time) at the quantum level, we would say that intellect is the discriminatory property which discerns between the action of particles and the action of waves as the energy packets we call quanta interact with one another. While this is a complex and difficult to understand piece of territory, when we discover the action of intellect on our own level, within human beings, it is much easier to understand, because it always represents discernment and choice — understanding the distinction between various options and having an intention towards one as opposed to another.

 Swedenborg wrote Divine Love and Wisdom because he was trying to indicate the way in which emotion and intellect interact with one another as fundamentally lawful entities which supersede the selection of the material. If one reaches work, one begins to detect what one might call a subtle prejudice against the material, which is always regarded as inferior relative to God’s Presence and the existence of the Kingdom of Heaven. This is because the material alone, taken as a separate entity which exists often for itself, has no inherent or legitimate meaning. Only the action of love and intelligence can impart meaning at all; and because we live in a universe that is made of meanings from the bottom up, it becomes clear enough that love and intelligence, which are supremely divine forces, must be perpetually an action to support any existence at all.

What is important here is to marry Swedenborg’s understanding with the understanding of the law according to Gurdjieff’s perspective and the context of physical law as it relates to modern sciences. One can't properly understand the universe in any sense with only one third of the force of law; and so here, we attempt to redefine universal law to include the other laws necessary to give us a universe with the properties we actually see, which include love and intelligence.

Warmly,

Lee

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.