What is Death? Part IV

Death is too big to swallow, but it certainly swallows all of us. One can only describe it from a single perspective – that is, one's own. While attempting to organize it in relationship to the ideas of metaphysical humanism, I've put it in a larger context—yet it’s still my own context, no matter how large the circle inscribed around it is.

In order to bring death into a more immediate practical context, I'm going to have to refer to points I have made before about Gurdjieff’s teachings. At the very end of Beelzebub’s Tales, our friendly neighborhood fallen angel remarks:

The sole means now of saving the beings of the planet Earth would be to implant in their presence a new organ… having such properties that every one of these unfortunates, during the process of his existence, should constantly sense and be aware of the inevitability of his own death, as well as of the death of everyone upon whom his eyes, or attention, rest.

Only such a sensation and such an awareness could destroy the egoism now so completely crystallized in them that it has swallowed up the whole of their essence, and at the same time uproot that tendency to hate others which flows from it—the tendency that engenders those mutual relationships which are the chief cause of all their abnormalities, unbecoming to three-brained beings and maleficent for them and for the whole of the Universe.

This particular organ, as I mentioned in The Sixth Sense, is our sensation of Being—not the conventional sensation of the body, that is, the one whereby if we hit our thumb with a hammer, it hurts. No matter how refined that kind of sensation may become, it's not the same thing as a permanent, active sensation of Being, which has the function of an organ. 

An organ works at all times, not just once in a while. Imagine, for example, if your lungs breathed only when you noticed them. Well then. The game would be up right away, wouldn't it? The point of an organic sensation of Being is that it is permanently and perpetually functional. Folks spend many years, even whole lifetimes, in esoteric disciplines learning the most rarefied kinds of stuff you can imagine. Yet even if they’ve heard of it—and not everyone does, not by a long shot—they confuse the idea of organic sensation with ordinary sensation and basically have no idea of the difference.

I intended to make some remarks about practical work in regard to death here, and I will try. 

One has no hope of understanding the foundation of life without such sensation. While Gurdjieff did not spell it out in so many letters, the understanding permeates the direct oral tradition of his teaching relentlessly and in every direction. 

Organic sensation of being brings with it, by default, an exact constant sense and awareness of the inevitability of our own death. It’s built into the premise. It’s impossible to precisely explain this without the experience.

The presence of death within life is a natural consequence of the nature of life itself. Death is, in fact, the metaphysical premise upon which life is already based when it arises. The installation of an active—a creative, rather than fearful—intelligence in regard to death leaves us dwelling in the present moment with respect and humility, and a proper valuation life – exactly what the Sanskrit  word dharma means. It does this not by means of reasoning, but intuition. It does it not by means of philosophy, but life experience. It does it not by means of indoctrination, but demonstration. It does it not by means of intimidation, but love.

This question of intimidation in regards to the matter is interesting, because I think we’re all intimidated by death. Paradoxically, it's only through an encounter with the active sensation of life that we can resign ourselves to our condition. That alone brings an absolute counterweight to the fear of cessation. 

It reminds me of words I’ve repeated many times; yet before I repeat them this time, I’ll mention how I first heard them. 

For most of my career, I’ve traveled to Asia. During the exercise of this vocation, there have been countless times when I was out of the country for one or another vital event of some kind. In May of 1990, when Jeanne de Salzmann died, I was in Taiwan. I heard the news only on my return. This was in an age when email did not exist, and phone calls overseas were expensive. (In other words, the dark ages.) 

When I got back, my teacher Betty Brown told me. As I recall, she told me on the phone, and then wanted to see me in person. We met in a restaurant called Burger Heaven up near the New York City Gurdjieff Foundation. Burger Heaven used to be called “the Annex.” 

Betty met me there and we commiserated although, in hindsight, I was entirely unable to appreciate the gravity of the loss. Although I was hardly new to the Gurdjieff work, I never had the opportunity of working directly with Mme. de Salzmann that so many of my contemporaries had.

Betty handed me a little slip of paper. It was folded; I opened it. On it she had written, 

Be there in relation to a force. Then it doesn't matter so much, what happens.

According to her, this was the last comment on the work that Jeanne de Salzmann left us. It serves, perhaps more importantly than her remark, there is no death, to remind us that we have to put our service to life and to Being first, without any thought to our death, other than its obligatory nature and the help it gives us in remembering our place. 

We do not need to devote thought to our death. We can, however, devote sensation—and, ultimately—feeling to it. 

These wordless qualities of an alternate intelligence have so far proved for me to be far more help in preparation for that moment than all the collective things I can ever think up.

May your heart be close to God, 

and God close to your heart.

Lee

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.