The Inner Physics of Attraction

A master says there is nothing so like God as being: insofar as it has being it is like God. A master says that being is so pure and so lofty that all that God is, is being. God knows nothing but being, He is conscious of nothing but being: being is His circumference. 

God loves nothing but His being, He thinks of nothing but His being. I say all creatures are one being. One master says that some creatures are so close to God and have pressed into themselves so much of the divine light that they give being to other creatures. 

That is not true, for being is so high, so pure and so akin to God that no one can give being save God alone in Himself. God's characteristic is being. A master says one creature can quite well give life to another. Therefore in being alone lies all that is at all. Being is the first name. 

Whatever is deficient is a falling away from being. Our whole life ought to be being. 

Meister Eckhart, The Complete Mystical Works, Sermon 82, page 404 (Trans. M. O’C Walshe.)

In examining this question of how I attract what's necessary to acquire a greater sense of presence and Being, I use the word intimate. This word comes from the Latin intimare, to impress or make familiar, which in its turn derives from intimus, inmost.

So I’m indicating a need to turn towards what is inmost in order to discover what attracts Being. Being is embedded deep without ourselves, inseparable from what we are. While the word molecular conveys a good bit of just how deep this experience of Being lies, it is only in the experience of Being itself that we can discover how deeply embedded it is. It lies at the root of creation and what is; no thing exists without first Being.

Being is, furthermore, a conscious principle; it is consciousness itself, yet even more; for consciousness does not exist without first Being, either. We approach here a mystery which you should resist trying to understand with the intellect alone. Eckhart touches on this as well in sermon 82 in his point about the contradictions of joy and sorrow; it’s required reading for those interested in the study of the subject. 

Intellect has contradiction inherent to it; Being does not. Yet one cannot just decide to banish contradiction and be rid of it. An intellectual resolution to our confusion about Being is what we so earnestly desire; and it’s this desire itself that collapses on us. We’re perpetually buried beneath it.

The intimate, organic, molecular sense of Being, which is emitted by the level “below” us, is actually a much finer and very high rate of vibration. Here, paradoxically, we discover that the level below us isn’t actually below us at all. If and when we acquire a sensation of it —a permanent sensation, I just emphasize—we discover it is a higher level than the one our conventional awareness rests in. It is more intimate; and it draws unto itself the intimacy that creates it. It has a natural, unmanned and organic ability to attract the substance of which it itself is made; and thus an accretion takes place in which sensation, organic and molecular sensation, needs no assistance to maintain itself. Because it arises from Being it already understands how to be fed from Being; the spring from which this water wells up is eternal, that is, it lies outside time—a subject Eckhart also covers in sermon 82. And since time is above all a subjective experience within us, we can understand here that Being comes into us, and exists within us, from outside time. The molecular sensation of Being is a resident or inherent state of this action.

Ah, well, we come back once again as to how one does this.  

How do I do it? 

What can be done?

There’s a certain magnetism that develops as the finer particles of Being are collected and deposited within the soul. Let us call it the inner physics of attraction. Everything from within me, all of my sensation or my inner life—which is not what I collect in my examinations of my outwardness—must be turned towards this inner physics of attraction. I first need to hear about it, study the ideas of it, of course: the intellect is the blade that cuts a path through the vines that obscure it inwardly.  But in the end I must understand it as a physical thing, not a mental one. 

Warmly,

Lee

Announcing the publication of 

The Reconstruction of the Soul

The Reconstruction of the Soul is a wide-ranging investigation of symbolism in High and Late Medieval art. It includes detailed analyses of the Unicorn Tapestries at the Cluny Museum and the Cloisters in New York, as well as detailed examinations of the mysterious, erotic and bizarre symbolism in The Cathedral of St. Lazare in Autun.

Along the way, it traces the roots of Western esoteric art from Babylon to ancient Greece, revealing traditions that are still alive today, some 3000 or more years later.

The material is illustrated with photographs taken by the author on location in France and New York, as well as source material from various museums.

It will appeal to anyone interested in the symbolic transmission of the world's Western esoteric heritage.

All funds from your purchase of this book will go to support the translation of important historical documents related to the Gurdjieff tradition.

The author is currently at work on a second volume which will explore even earlier (!) influences on esoteric art and practice. Anticipated publication of this follow-up work will be late 2019.

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.