Purgatory, Gurdjieff, and Meister Eckhart: Part 2

 

Illustrations are from the Tympanum of Conques Cathedral in Conques, France.

An esoteric abstract on the details of the Tympaum is available for free, on request from the author.

8. "And the aggregate of the results issuing from all cosmic sources, great  and small, they then named the 'common-cosmic Ansanbaluiazar.'  

"It is interesting to remark concerning this 'common-cosmic  Ansanbaluiazar' that present-day Objective Science has the formulation.'  'Everything issuing from everything and again entering into everything.’

The emergence of this new, “second order”sun in an individual is precisely what Gurdjieff was referring to in the following passage:

"Before that common-cosmic misfortune, all the 'highest being-bodies' that arose and were perfected in certain tetartocosmoses and in their first descendants were immediately united with the Most Most Holy Protocosmos itself, because their common presences were still actualizing the results fully corresponding to it.“

This process, however, breaks down in mankind. And the description of that breakdown must have something to do with Gurdjieff’s vision of the inner man, the organ kundabuffer, and the way in which all of this conspired to ruin our psyches.

"Before this terrifying cosmic event, the sacred Theomertmalogos that issued from the Most Most Holy Sun Absolute was still in a pure state, without any admixture of extraneously caused arisings having their own subjective properties…

This passage introduces us to one of the significant correspondences between Gurdjieff and Meister Eckhart’s description of the human soul and its function. ME’s contention is that man’s contact with God is contaminated by every act of contact with the external, which — whether inner or outer — must be construed as subjective in man’s current ordinary state. The majority of his practice as expounded in Sermon One and in many other texts consists of an effort to eliminate every subjective admixture from being in order to purify it so that contact with God can take place in the soul.

 …and when this sacred Theomertmalogos entered the spheres of those planets on which the sacred crystallizations arose, whose transformations through 'beings-apparatuses'' served for the coating and perfecting of higher being-bodies, these latter acquired presences exactly corresponding to the required conditions of existence in the sphere of the Most Most Holy Sun Absolute.

In Gurdjieff’s conception, in this antediluvian, primordial state of man’s being, the word of God entered one’s inward being, the soul (which ME interprets in Sermon One as the mechanism for the interface between God and man, implying that he envisions a mechanical and substantive nature in the relationship, much like Gurdjieff’s) and directly informed the interaction of a human being, so that their other manifestations were directly aligned with God’s intentions. 

Indeed, Gurdjieff says this in what is for him a relatively straightforward manner. His description of “presences exactly corresponding to the required conditions of existence in the spirit of the Most Most Holy Sun Absolute” can be re-cast in plain English as men acting according to the commandments of God. Such human beings qualify for existence in heaven. This is strikingly aligned with ME’s conception of the way a human being will behave if they’re directly aligned with the will of God and have no admixture of their own presence in the relationship.

Something catastrophic goes wrong in us, however:

"But after that common-cosmic misfortune, on account of which the sacred Theomertmalogos began to issue from the Most Most Holy Sun Absolute with the admixture of subjective properties coming from extraneously caused arisings, from that time on, the sacred 'highest being-bodies' no longer had the possibility of corresponding to the required conditions of existence in the sphere of the Most Most Holy Prime Source.”

This is where we are now in our inner condition. The subjective has contaminated it. We no longer obey the commandments of God. And it is exactly the eradication of this subjectivity that ME calls us to in the majority of his sermons when he calls on us to abandon everything of both the inner and the outer condition that we conventionally inhabit. Most religions ask us to abandon our attachment to the outer: Meister Eckhart, ever the radical, asks us to abandon our attachment to everything. He, like Gurdjieff, is not going to win any popularity contests with the drift of his messaging.

Gurdjieff goes on to explain the collapse in the function of the soul in its role as an intermediary for God’s word:

"This admixture of extraneously caused arisings took place in the sacred Theomertmalogos owing to the following and, I must add, unforeseen causes.  

"When each perfected 'highest being-body' becomes an independent Individual and acquires its own law of the sacred Triamazikamno, it begins to emanate similarly to the Most Most Holy Sun Absolute, but in miniature. 

This passage describes not just the creation of an individual ego within the context of a single human being, but — and more importantly — the formation of the many “I’s” that human beings have within them. They function as a multitude of individual egos within an individual. This is a reconfiguration of the myth of the Tower of Babel, where Babylon represents the outer world and the many individuals within a human being who aspire to ”reach heaven” (be in charge of everything, as they conceive of it in the tower, a concretized symbol of mechanistic rationalism.)

One of the interesting points about this observation is that individual impressions and their aggregation form subordinate “individuals” with their own subjective impetus. In our ordinary state, we remain unaware of the collectivization of impressions. Per Gurdjieff’s fascinating allegory, as they aggregate, they acquire their own egos. These kernels function like abrasive grains of sand, individuated and conflicting parts of our psyche. In this way, our inner being becomes an environment of competitors, each one of which has successfully mirrored the nature of the universe—but in a subjective way, rather than an objective one.

This completely prevents them from reuniting in an objective manner.

May you be well within today.

Lee

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.