Crystals

Beryl var. aquamarine and Lepidolite

 This morning I ran across a public comment about crystallization, and a question about what it means to "de-crystallize" oneself in the sense of Gurdjieff’s teaching.

This rather Ouspensky-ish term, which is probably mentioned more in In Search of the Miraculous than any other book, is not currently used at the Gurdjieff Foundation. One hears it quite rarely. Yet of course the idea belongs to part of the core of the teaching.

The person asking the question wondered what crystallization means, and how one goes about struggling against it. 

The word crystal comes from the Greek krustallos, which means, among other things, ice. And of the word was conventionally used to describe something transparent. So the ideas of coldness, a high degree of hardened order, and transparency are all contained in this word.

If we're crystallized, what is in us is highly structured. This means that we have constructed an inner system, a set of ideas and beliefs, that are interlocking and support one another. They allow us to see the world through the lens they create: it appears to be transparent, but it forms a powerful barrier between us and the world as it is. They inflect the light that passes through them, the accurate light of the real world, and impart a character of their own to it. Because our structure is unique and idiosyncratic, the character that the crystallization imparts is both subjective and distorted. At the same time, because the crystal is transparent, we’re convinced that what we see through it is accurate. Transparency deceives us by imparting the illusion that the barrier isn’t there. We speak and act from the conviction that what we see is accurate and that our responses are equally so.

This relates, if one thinks about it, to Gurdjieff’s statement “man cannot do.” While it appears to be a statement about our limitations, it could also be taken as an admonition, that is, we should not “do.” 

If we take it from this perspective, perhaps we can see that when we try to reach conclusions and take actions when we view the world through our crystal, we are doing. On our own authority we have filtered the world through a lens of our own making and are now trying to act upon that input.

In this sense, we touch on one of the big ideas about chief feature, another traditional expression that has fallen by the wayside over the years in the formal and perhaps more esoteric work of inner circles in the Gurdjieff work. Gurdjieff once said to Ouspensky (again, I refer to text found in In Search of the Miraculous) that the simple way of understanding chief feature is that “everything” about Ouspensky is chief feature. That is to say, chief feature refers to the crystal, the lens, we have formed in ourselves through which we  perceive everything that happens and attempt to take action as a result of.

In order to understand that we even have a crystallization in us, we have to begin to see that the transparency our vision of life affords is distorted; we need to study the nature of the way that lens affects the light of awareness as it passes into us. The dual actions of seeing and of questioning everything thus become connected to the idea of crystallization and how one begins to undo its results.

Crystals are beautiful things, of course. I’m a mineral collector and I have quite a few of them around me as I write this, including some gorgeous examples of beryl and spodumene. The point is that crystals are quite attractive and once we have one, we see it as precious. This is a pretty good description of the structure we build within ourselves through which we wish to interpret life.

One thing that is certain to penetrate, dissolve, or even break a type of crystallization in a person is suffering. That, and huge shocks. The difficulty with the huge shocks is that they break the crystal and there’s no telling what will result from that. Sometimes an even harder and more intense crystal immediately re-forms as a kind of protection, which then becomes nearly impossible to overcome. 

Suffering is generally preferable because if it is engaged in intentionally, that is, if I meet the suffering of my own life and experience it, it gradually dissolves the barrier between me and what is seen, which largely forms in the feelings. I could write a great deal right now about how feeling becomes crystallized, but I won’t do so. 

One should just think about this quite carefully while observing the way one reacts to things. Much will become clear in that simple action over time.

 The idea that crystals have both order, beauty, and transparency as inherent qualities is quite interesting when we think about it in terms of Gurdjieff’s comments on crystallization. We love all of these things: we like things to be ordered, we like them to be beautiful, and we like to be able to see through them. We have a fascination with it. As we love these things, so do we forget the way they form a barrier between us and the unadulterated truth of our situation. Truth is a revolution that challenges and even destroys order; it is not always beautiful; and the moment it is distorted by an illusionary transparency, it looks exactly like truth, except that it isn’t true anymore.

Those familiar with the Reality of Being will quickly recognize the connection between the last statement of illusionary transparency and the ideas, attitudes, and practices that Jeanne de Salzmann attempted to bring to her own work.

Pondering this question, I’m well reminded of the statement my own teacher Betty Brown made to me in the last years of her life. “The things we love the most are the first things that have gotta go.”

May you be well within today.

Lee

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.