Organic Compassion

Tomorrow is my 37th anniversary of sobriety. 

So, let's take a break from examining Metaphysical Humanism.

In Gurdjieff’s Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson, two of the essential conceptual components of inner life we encounter are intentional suffering and remorse of conscience. 

These two concepts are inextricably linked to one another; yet the first is individual and personal, and the second is proto-cosmic.

The distinction is as follows. Remorse of conscience arises, according to Gurdjieff, from the actual particles of God—”His Endlessness”— which penetrate the entire universe. As such, they’re a key part of the essential tissue from which reality is made; and it calls us to a mystery about reality itself: why should it be sorrowful at all? This question is emotionally deep, and does not submit so easily to intellectual analysis; yet the sensory and emotive capacities of the human organism allow us an access to this through experience, rather than hypothesis or conjecture.

If anything, this access only deepens the mystery; we can participate, but it is much more difficult to explain.

This is where the question of intentional suffering comes in. What is it?

Our theories on the matter turn out to be relatively useless. Understanding is primarily gained by intuitively, instinctively engaging in intentional suffering and beginning thereby to comprehend the reason that the tissue of the universe is composed, at its heart, of an infinite sorrow. That infinite sorrow becomes much more personal when intentional suffering is engaged in.

Now, it's true, on the surface of things folks may differ in opinion about what intentional suffering consists of. This is because there are internal and external explanations of this term; and of the two, the external one is relatively worthless, because everything in regards to suffering that takes place externally take place on this level, that is, within the physical realm that we exist in: material reality. 

Inner intentional suffering, however, belongs to the metaphysical realm, the realm of the soul. This is a realm that exists within the material but remains, in many ways, forever untouched by it; and our experiences within it, which are created not just by our thought about it, but our sensation and feeling of it, are what truly matter to us from a spiritual point of view.

What, then, of exactly the aim of these two different understandings? 

Why should we care about  remorse of conscience? 

Why care about intentional suffering?

Both of these faculties, as they develop, lead slowly in the direction of what I would call organic compassion.

Organic compassion is quite different than the external compassion which I typically manufacture for myself in one way or another. In point of fact, my external compassionate features are weak. 

The motive force beyond ordinary compassionate action is not invalid; it is simply external, more superficial.  And I think we can all see how that works in ourselves. We want to have compassion. We think about it. Compassion is a philosophically and religiously correct attitude, I want to "cultivate" it.

Allow me to point out that it’s possible to conform to all of the forms and requirements of the outward action of compassion without actually being compassionate. There is an inner level of emotional investment to compassion that involves suffering.

Swedenborg talked about this when he spoke about how human beings outwardly manage to conform to everything that is required of them, because it’s the way things "ought" to be done—while in our hearts we actually yearn for more selfish (and perhaps even cruel) forms of action in relationship. 

Every human being is a balancing act in this regard; yet if we don't see our impulses (that is, our selfish impulses) for what they are, we never bring them into question; and this allows us to exercise what appears to be compassion while actually not feeling compassionate at all inwardly. We follow the form; but when the going gets tough, it becomes selective; and true organic compassion isn’t selective.

This dilemma explains the endless instances of humanity, of all of us, where we believe in how deeply compassionate we are right up until the moment it doesn't actually suit us anymore. At that moment it’s thrown out the window, the middle finger comes out.

In order for compassion to be genuine, it has to be molecular. That is to say, it has to be built not just on my moral ideas, philosophies, theories, and attitudes towards compassion – everything society and other people have "bought" me: it has to be deeply learned, within the tissue of the body itself, from a sensational and emotional point of view. Both my molecular structure and my feelings must begin to understand what compassion are.

To some extent, this is the whole point of why Gurdjieff introduced the ideas of remorse of conscience and intentional suffering. They are the forces through which organic compassion can begin to grow into our Being. 

And that has something to do with the cosmological structures we are a product of, which are under discussion in the posts on Metaphysical Humanism.

Warmly,

Lee

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.