A Trip to Purgatory

 In the course of our discussions about Purgatory, my friend Bernardo — who originally asked me to write a bit about the subject — sent me a few quotes from the chapter that, when I was reading them, suddenly resulted in what I think is a rather stunning recognition.

On January 22, 2014, I had an incredibly vivid dream, one of those “teaching dreams” that one rarely encounters in a lifetime. It was striking enough to me that I posted it on the blog.

It was only this morning when I was reading the quotes from Purgatory that I realized what the dream actually represented.

The first quote

"When we were there, you probably noticed that we always saw and sensed that from there all the space of our Great Universe or, as your favorites would say, all the 'skies' reflected, as it were, the radiance which recalls the radiance of the famous and incomparable 'Almacornian turquoise.' Its atmosphere is always pure like the 'phenomenal-Sakrooalnian-crystal.'”

In my dream, the following comment:

One other vital feature strikes me as I gaze on this scene. There is a striking, magnificent, pastel blue sky with a hint of sea green and graceful, amorphous clouds in subtle herringbone patterns. 

The instant I see it, it falls deep into my body. The impression is one of the deepest Grace and serenity, of an overarching glory, the deification of nature and, indeed, the Presence of the Lord Himself in this landscape. 

The second quote

"Everywhere on that holy planet, in corresponding gorges, are convenient caves of all kinds of 'interior form' – made partly by Nature Herself and partly artificially – with striking views from their entrances, and in these caves there is everything that can be required for a blissful and tranquil existence, with the complete absence of any essence-anxiety whatever in any part of the presence of any cosmic independent Individual, such as 'higher-being-bodies' can also become.”

In my dream, the following comment:

As we continue up the hill, the bus somehow morphs into a wooden cart drawn, as improbable as it may seem, by a donkey. I’m in the cart, and the German woman, who has now exhausted her role, is still with me. We are passing one site after another that seems somehow compelling, interesting, worth stopping for, but we plod on towards the top of the hill. As we move upward, sets of impressions strike me.

There are numerous stone crypts embedded in the ordered, trim green grass of the hillside. It is vaguely reminiscent of an Etruscan necropolis. As we pass the first set I sense these are very interesting, representing catacombs or some other ancient underground earthworks worth seeing. It seems, in point of fact, like these holes are a major part of what I came for, that they are maybe somehow connected to the essence of my journey.

***

I realized today that this was undoubtedly a dream about Purgatory; and that it was not, in fact, a dream at all, but an actual visit to the planet, hosted by Louise March, who I did not successfully identify in the dream at the time I had it. This is the reason for the presence of a German woman I did not personally know in what was otherwise a clearly psychic dream. She was the tour guide; and nothing needed to be said, because the lesson was implicit.

The point I am going to make here is that Purgatory is not an allegorical place in the least. It is an actual dwelling place for souls on the astral level; and Gurdjieff’s descriptions of it are a clear indication that he had been there.

Not only that, it seems clear enough from here that the parallels between some of the imagery and tone in Northern Renaissance religious painting, which emerged from the esoteric schools that built the Gothic cathedrals, are drawn from a tradition that recognized Purgatory. Hieronymus Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights is perhaps the most telling of these paintings; but overall, the astonishing crystalline clear vision of Northern Renaissance painters was an attempt to pictorially render the atmosphere of the planet and the effect it has on vision in the way that Gurdjieff describes it.

I will mention here as an aside that it’s entirely impossible to understand what Northern Renaissance painting was all about without understanding its esoteric religious roots. The turquoise skies in so many of these paintings are drawn directly from those who saw the skies of Purgatory in the midst of religious practice and astral dreams; and the clarity of vision that they brought to everything they painted was drawn from that same well of spiritual inspiration. 

No wonder all the other artists in Europe looked to them for how to paint. It was patently obvious: they had all the mojo. Northern Renaissance painters—the best of them—were progenitors of objective art.

Purgatory, being the most astrally important planet in the universe, creates a corresponding reflection of itself in our spiritual life on earth. We have access to its character, its quality, its landscape, its denizens — both good and bad, because, like the landscape in my dream, it is at the same time impossibly beautiful and indelibly corrupted — to the extent that we deepen our inner work and our devotion to God.

Understanding that Gurdjieff’s description of this place is actually a report of an extraordinary spiritual and metaphysical journey to a real placeoutside the confines of earth as we know it, one begins to believe that all of the other places he described are not just clever elements of magical realism, but also real destinations in the cosmos.

It’s often said that there are multiple aspects to Gurdjieff’s work; and it’s often assumed that those aspects are various allegorical meanings. Yet I very rarely hear anyone say that one of the aspects is that what is taking place in his “parables” is real. 

If we strip the allegory from his reports, we're left with something even more bafflingly extraordinary and impossibly beautiful than the intimations of hidden meaning we so routinely assign to them... What I would say to the reader is that do not doubt, you may yourself someday tread this ground—if you have a real wish to be.

The situation reminds me quite succinctly of my encounter with the Virgin Mary in 2001, which conclusively proved to me that she is absolutely, unequivocally, uncompromisingly and irrevocably real—and that the entire story of Christ is equally real. It is categorically impossible for Mary to be real without everything else being real — as Gurdjieff pointed out, for one thing to be different, everything would have to be different.

In any event, after I read Gurdjieff’s comments and understood today my dream, much better than the clever interpretations I wrote in 2014, I realized I too have been to Purgatory.

I will confess, with all of the caveats it comes with, there is quite simply no place I would rather be.

Ponder that for a while.

May you be well within today.

Lee

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.