What is Death? Part III

In addition to the inward breath of each individual consciousness, which draws the very fine particles of divine love back into concentrations of awareness—in reciprocal action both dilatory and contracting –there is an outward breath. These inward and outward breaths are metaphysical, because they originate in a place beyond the material reality that manifests them, and feed that same metaphysical Being. 

The physical universe is what Gurdjieff would have called the ”first” being-food of God’s nature, corresponding to what feeds his metaphysical body. But the intellectual-universe and feeling-universe are what feed God’s intelligence and love. These properties do not depend on mechanics for their action; they depend on agency. That is to say, unlike the physical aspects of reality, which are inexorably lawful and objectively mechanical, these aspects of reality are volitional and involve discrimination and choice. 

Gurdjieff described these two metaphysical foods of God’s Being as conscious labor and intentional suffering. 

Conscious labor feeds the metaphysical intelligence of God’s Being through effort; this serves the same purpose that the physical food of air serves the human body, and qualifies as what Gurdjieff would have called the second being-food.

Intentional suffering is the third being food of God, serving as the finest level of vibration available through experience. The pinnacle, in Gurdjieff’s cosmological order, of human responsibility was to take on a portion of the sorrow of God. What he did not so directly say, but eventually becomes self evident from any close analytical reading of his entire oeuvre, is that this is also a food for God. 

At the time of death, the individual concentrations of these various foods are completed in the life form engaged in the action. There is, in other words, a metaphysical "result.” Many esoteric  traditions recognize this. The Sufi masters believed that nothing can change in a man after he dies; and Swedenborg said much the same thing. The quantity and quality of what has been re-concentrated in Being, in other words, is set and established at the time of death. A soul – of whatever quality — has been formed. This is not a one-dimensional process and there are of necessity many varieties of souls. The structure of organic life from the underpinnings of microbiology up to creatures the size of elephants and whales is a correspondent physical entity reflecting the nature and quality of all the different souls that can form. This is worthy of contemplation; worldwide, so called ‘primitive” essence-based cultures, including the native and supposedly naive (by the standards of western classicism) North and South American cultures, reflect this in their folk tales and their art. These understandings are so ubiquitous and consistently similar in worldwide culture simply because mankind originally understood these principles by inward nature, not by outward intellect.

We can draw what happens after death with a rather broad brush dipped in the pigments of Swedenborg's palette. There is an analogous digestive system which takes this ”food” of Being, these concentrated particles of divine love, and moves them to the parts of divine being that they can best serve. Some are moved to places where the service is of a higher level (heaven) and some are moved to places where are the food has turned out to be less useful (hell.) You can see from this corresponding analogy that re-concentrated manifestations of Divine Being can serve in an extraordinary variety of ways ranging all the way from preserved individual manifestations of useful agency (angels) to complete dissolution (the biblical term for this is "being cast into the fire.”)

All of human descriptions of heaven, hell, souls, reincarnation, immortality, and so on are nothing more than facsimiles of what is true. This is why (and I report this story directly from someone who was there when it happened) when one of his pupils ask Gurdjieff in person whether reincarnation "was true or not,” Gurdjieff replied, “Is true. Not exact—difficult to explain. But something like that.” This is in contrast to Gurdjieff's writings about reincarnation, which were no doubt penned in order to dissuade the naïve from any superficial beliefs about the reliability of such ideas.

The essential point to return to here is that the function of death is deeply tied to the metaphysical regrowth of God’s Being. To draw yet another corresponding analogy, think of all the bacteria in our own gut who, while living their individual lives—which on their own level are just as filled with selfhood, urgency, and drama as ours are –ultimately serve a life so far greater than themselves that they can never have a conception of what it is. Each of our own cells is in a similar position. The Hindu conception of dharma as conforming to law and responsibility, as well as the Buddhist conception of the same word as a comprehensive truth, both apply here. Scale does not affect the character or the action of law; it just affects its mannerisms.

I'm sure by now you're bored. All this metaphysical crap, you probably think to yourself. What does it mean to me? Basically, I just want to know what happens when I die. 

What does it mean?

Those of you who feel this way about the subject have my sympathies. I wrote the entire book on Metaphysical Humanism simply because I was trying to understand what meaning is in the first place. I did that because when I first thought to myself, what does this life mean? one very early morning while I was walking down at the spot where the Sparkill Creek enters the Hudson river, I realized that it wasn't just what life might mean that was a question for me. 

I didn't even know what meaning was. 

And without, I thought to myself, understanding that, I can't even begin to answer the question.

Well, I am sure you’re saying to yourself by now, all very well and good, but I don't want to read a long book about what meaning is. And I sympathize with that too. I wrote the book, and I don't want to read it either. By now, I have had those thoughts and I am done with it. 

...Sort of, mind you, because the questions continue to expand, which is why we have this essay. 

But I am going to try and drop kick this football over the goal posts in the next essay, and speak directly to this question in a more practical way. 

I have no idea if that will work; each essay is an experiment in what will happen next. 

So we will see.

May your heart be close to God, 

and God close to your heart.

Lee

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.