Love and Suffering; Waves and Particles; Feeling and Being

One of the things the changes with an active sensation is that one discovers in every moment the way that life flows into us.

One might think, if one studied the subject of impressions, that I speak here of impressions and how we take them in. Yet impressions fall into many categories, and they are all, in a certain sense, objects. When we see things, we see them as objects. When we hear things, they are less physically tangible, but they still become objects in our intellectual assessment, that is, “noises,” “songs,” or “speech.” When we feel things they become “pleasure or “pain.” In each case, the mind classifies them according to a system and they become objects in that system, objects which can be anticipated, collected, sorted out, and — ultimately, relative to the act of agency — produced.

Yet the impression of life and of the impressions of it (please excuse the reflexive nature of the statement) are not objects. The question of this is related to the quantum state, although it may not appear to be so on this gross level. When we make these things objects we turn them in into fixed locations which can be referred to. Gurdjieff called these “associations.” And indeed, they serve a function in this sense. Yet all impressions are not fixed locations — they're waves of energy that move through us, that sink into us. Even the nature of associations of the past, of memories, is a fluid one, because although they seem to be fixed — for example, the fact that my sister died is a fixed location in my memory — they're actually always in movement. My sister’s death never exists by itself in a box that I can open and look into, although in a certain abstract sense that is exactly how memory functions. My sister’s death only exists as a wave, in context. So it has the same paradoxical nature — exactly the same nature, and this is important — as a quantum phenomena. This shows us the very precise analogy, which is no coincidence, between the ambiguity of the quantum state and the nature of consciousness. Consciousness is actually, like all other things, a product of the quantum state: it has all of its features, reconfigured and expressed according to the appropriate level.

Life flows into us. Life is not a fixed particle; it is a wave. Life has nature of its own that carries a distinct vibration which exceeds the nature of all other impressions, because it contains them. It is possible to experience this through organic sensation of Being, through a sensation which becomes alive and exists in its own right as an additional mind within the body. This is, for all intents and purposes, a second body.

In ancient systems — which have reconfigured themselves into popular metaphysics– this second body is called the astral body. “Astral” in this sense means planetary, but in a certain sense planetary also means “of the stars,” because planets and stars are on a higher level than we are. Planets are part of the physical body of a star’s system. By developing the astral body, the body of sensation of Being, one begins to participate in energetic exchanges of a nature belonging to the planetary level of the solar system, that is, the influences (among others) of the earth and the moon. The entire system of astrology was originally developed to measure and qualify these influences as they are expressed in mankind. Those forces can have a conscious or unconscious effect on human beings. Only if the organic sensation of Being is developed are those effects conscious in any sense. If the astral body is developed, it lays the foundation for the development of the mental body — which, as we have been examining over the last few series of posts, is actually the feeling body and is not an astral or planetary but a solar body. The mental body comes under the influence of the sun.

These additional bodies are additive awarenesses that do not subtract from or substantially change the nature of the physical or coarse awareness. The natures are separated in existence and action, although they are conjunctive. Their influence does of course affect that awareness, but it is always present, and because it moves under its own law it will always have features that cannot quite come under the rule of the higher bodies. 

I turn back once again to the analogy of your digestion, which must be undertaken by the molecular intelligence of the body alone. If you tried to digest food with your mind you'd die within a few days, because your mind — the intellectual mind you're reading this with and live most of your life "through" — is entirely incapable of work on that fine a level. In the same way, if the astral or mental body tried to “digest” the coarser material we work with in our ordinary planetary body it would botch the job. 

In this sense, as we are we become responsible for the work of digesting our ordinary life. We can’t depend on higher spiritual powers to do it. They play different roles, work with different substances, and have different intentions. This will give readers an additional clue to what Gurdjieff meant by “work in life.” 

And it is always been a tradition among the higher levels of esotericism that the living of life in an ordinary way according to a true awareness of life is the highest practice of law.

I opened this essay with the point that life flows into us. It's our objective to come into life with the direct impression of that energy in the way that it falls into her being as a sacred substance. The presence of God is directly instilled in us through this experience. There is no functional difference between God and Love and Life; they are of one. The best possible source for intellectual and conceptual understandings of this in a more comprehensive way are the writings of Emmanuel Swedenborg; yet there can be no substitute for the experience developed through sensation, because it’s of a practical nature.

Some of my friends have asked me repeatedly to “explain” how one develops an organic sensation of Being. The only thing that I know for certain is that much suffering is necessary. One must be with one's suffering and come back to it again and again with courage and resignation, confront it over and over again and be willing to go on. 

One must not give up.

In this work, the more that one develops a relationship with life and with these additional bodies we can grow, the more one must suffer. The level of detail to which suffering eventually develops, the fine-grained nature of its pervasive influence throughout the experience of life, and the intricate relationship between love and suffering which is of molecular nature and arises, as it happens, in the quantum state, can hardly be explained. It can only be lived. 

Yet we might be able to say that love is a wave and suffering is a particle, if we wish to oversimplify.

Think about that for a while.

May you be well within today.

Lee

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.