Gravitas, Part II

Sunbow, Sparkill

May 2021

Magnetism and Gravity lead us into a discussion of the nature of Being and the idea that we “concentrate” attention and Being within ourselves. We are, after all, miniature models of the cosmos; and so the functions of magnetism and gravity exist within us and also form the foundation of our Being. This is true in a literal sense from the perspective of our atomic structure, our molecular nature. Yet it’s also true of our psyches; our psyches arise from our atomic and molecular nature, and their character must lawfully be entirely composed of matter and its interactions within the context of these two forces.

We never think of such things; one hardly needs to in order to do the dishes. Our psyche seems to be an independent entity that wanders around floating in a psychospiritual universe of our own — there’s a misconception for you —and we believe that it belongs to us, rather than understanding the way in which it’s intimately connected to the molecular, atomic, and quantum fabric of which everything is composed. Our psyche actually arises from that fabric; and it’s an integrated part of that fabric, not a separated one. Our perception of separation is fundamentally flawed; and yet almost everything human beings do rests in one way or another on that premise. So our idea of ourselves is in fact unnatural, unscientific, and harmful in that it creates a delusion of apartness from the cosmos we live in.

Yet in the way that our psyche arises from these forces, the nature of its awareness is also influenced by them. In this sense, we can see that there are both lateral (magnetic) and vertical (gravitational) influences on us. In this regard, the concepts of magnetism and gravity in terms of awareness and Being deserve some more examination.

We can understand almost everything that acts on us from the premise and context of ordinary life to be magnetic in one way or another. The magnetic forces within the world are the unconscious forces, the ones that attract and repel according to preference. In terms of the ordinary day-to-day psyche, we call these likes and dislikes, and Gurdjieff proposed a koan in regard to these properties: “like what it does not like.” 

It sounds rather like he wants us to turn polarity around into its opposite; yet this koan, in its subtly circular nature, actually points towards the provisional defenestration of polarity itself. Gurdjieff was above all interested in helping his pupils to establish Being; and Being is gravitational, not polarized.

Our failure to Be — our failure to “stay with” ourselves, as the issue is often represented —isn’t a failure of attraction and polarity. It’s a failure of gravity. There’s not enough mass concentrated in us to draw our attention inwards and keep it firmly rooted in the present moment. And our thinking has, relatively, very little mass.

The first difficulty we have in confronting this problem is the fact that we so absolutely believe the problem is polar and magnetic rather than one of the concentration of mass. We live our lives believing in an electrical universe; and yet the electrical impulse is, in an allegorical sense, the outer circumference of Gurdjieff’s enneagram. The inner triangle — which represents the law of three — is where the gravity is located; and this is a different entity.

While it’s entirely true that the two fundamental forces of the universe interact in order to maintain the universe, the two forces are different forces. Electricity and gravity are not the same force and gravity does not “arise” from electricity. When we attempt to approach Being through polarized understanding we always approach it through a tool that’s functionally unable to understand, because they are entirely different things, and we keep trying to interpret Being through magnetism rather than gravity. We are, in other words, trying to understand the system based on one-half of itself.

Hurrah for using all three parts today. Be well.

Warmly,

Lee

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.