Notes from May 20

May 20, 2020

Some comments I encountered last night caused me to see that mere association with the ideas and working groups is not always enough for people to develop a good understanding of what this work is.

This work has a value that comes from beyond this level. In the first place, human beings have a poor understanding of levels and most of us rarely, if ever, legitimately and deeply encounter material from another level that is retained long enough to inwardly form a center of gravity — even a temporary one, let alone a permanent one. Without a center of gravity, nothing is properly understood, because it’s quickly forgotten and all becomes relative, merging in to the background of everyday life as though nothing had happened in the first place. In order for something to become real in a human being, the center of gravity has to form strongly and take things in deeply and they have to seat themselves in Being in such a way that understanding becomes more objective.

During this process, many disturbing things take place in relationship to the ego. For one thing, as the center of gravity grows, ego finds less and less territory to occupy, and it erects stronger and stronger barriers to protect itself. While it does this, it becomes less and less visible — it goes into hiding. Its reactions to things that it sees as threatening become commensurately stronger; and as it withdraws into this defended territory, it actually gains strength because it is more concentrated. This is a situation every adept will eventually need to deal with; and it is not a happy one, because the ego cannot be eliminated and its activities become more intensely disruptive as it retreats. There is no easy advice on how to approach this problem.

The point about valuing the work and the level it comes from is essential. Ego alone is never able to do this. It just says it can. In truth, it is the weakest partner. The center of gravity, which can value things, stands in direct opposition to ego. It represents the actual concentration of astral forces. Gurdjieff called this formation of the astral body. The astral body is a metaphysical entity with physical connections to our ordinary being.

Nothing, as I said before, is understood or appreciated without a solid center of gravity; and this phrase is not an allegorical one. The center of gravity can be sensed through organic sensation in direct proportion to its formation and how much material it retains. It ought to be permanent, and it ought to be constantly feeding itself throughout the course of ordinary life. It’s a particular harmonic tone, an actual note that sounds in the body. The law of octaves can’t be properly understood until one feels the sound of this note within sensation; until that happens, the law of octaves is a theoretical structure. 

This particular note sounds as a bell that resounds throughout being and whose undertone is always present. It doesn’t go away. Experiences of sensation and being and consciousness that go away are mostly either imaginary, or so ephemeral and fleeting that they can produce no real result. Only the sounding of this inward bell can produce a result; and that only produces a result if the bell is properly forged and of the right shape.

Every human being forms their own inward center of gravity; so every human being has a bell of a slightly different shape or tone, but once the bell is formed, it’s a reliable partner in terms of the tone it produces. 

Gravity must be stronger than the words. It can be; it must be.

Without an inward center of gravity, wish is weak and one has no clear vision of life as a substance that flows into Being. With an inward center of gravity, Gurdjieff’s table of hydrogens becomes an experience, not a set of numbers on a piece of paper. Until that happens, everything is seen from approximately the same level: the Gurdjieff work and everything in it is actually a pathological psychology, not an organic state of being. Whole branches of this work can develop and evolve along these lines without ever going any further.

The more unified being is, the less doubt there is about unity. The sounding of the inner bell that is formed through sensation is the beginning of unity.

This beginning of unity is always characterized by feeling.

 A single note of real feeling, truly rung, does not deteriorate. 

It produces a lasting result that suggests further notes. It attracts vibration to itself. It is legitimate; that is to say, it is lawful. Inner gravity is capable of obedience; without it, nothing obeys, and life proceeds in the usual chaos. Life is a force unto itself; without obedience, it goes anywhere it wants to, which is another way of describing Gurdjieff’s mechanical man. The astral forces that affect us will have their way with us if we do not have a solidity, a durability, that serves in a lawful way. By serving in a lawful way I can actually acquire a degree of freedom that is not available if I subject myself to my average willful state, which is of the ego and not of Being.

Last night I wrote this additional note to myself: think about it. 

We are where we are and we have what we have because we lack respect. Wherever we are, however we are, whoever we are, it is like this. We lack respect. If we are rich, our wealth is there to teach us this. If we are poor, the same. Either we think we already have respect; or we think we’re so important that we don’t need it and that in fact it is owed to us, not the other way around. In this regard, we are fools. We could do much better; but we don’t bother.

This may seem like it’s not connected to the rest of this thought, but it is actually integral. We lack respect for the Gurdjieff work. We lack respect for tradition in general, we do not deepen it enough in us. We are like drunkards. We swill life, thinking it will fill us, but all it does is send us to the toilet over and over again. We are middlemen. We don’t take in the material that could stay with us and help us grow from within.

Think about all these things the next time you wake up and say to yourself that you aren’t working, that you have been asleep. 

The entire universe is at stake here. Don’t be lazy.

Go. and sense, and be well.

Lee

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.