A Harmonically Distributed Sensation—Part VI—To Speak of Feelings

Capital from Moissac

So of course, there's this third function, feeling. 

Yet it's entirely dependent on the foundation that is established in the tiniest parts of Being, down in the lower story, where every cell vibrates with a life and presence that affirms its nature and its right to help me be—just as I affirm its right to be a part of myself.

The grounded field of sensation, which acts as a permanent center of gravity for every manifestation that arises outside of it — be it intelligence, be it emotion — is the field within which all Being must manifest. This is because the field represents the spiritual force of God’s presence. The more concentrated it is, the more that Being itself — which is a pure force independent of ego — can become manifest. That pure force of being manifest within sensation is what raises the rate of vibration within the whole presence until it is compatible with the receiving of a feeling of vibration.

In his technical description of the rates of vibration, expounded in In Search of the Miraculous, Gurdjieff points out that the emotions are at a much higher rate of vibration than the intellect or the body. Let’s stress this: much higher. We are going to discuss this now in some practical terms so that you can understand just how distant we generally are from real feeling. Ouspensky’s mathematical estimation is as follows:  moving center (the faculty that perceives sensation) vibrates at a rate 30,000 times greater than intellectual center; and emotional center operates at a rate of 900 million times greater than sensation. 

 Of course these are estimates; they come from a creative use of mathematics, which are at best a rough model of reality, not (as some would have it) the truth about it. The point is that the rates of vibration are vastly different; and a great deal of investment and concentration of energy is needed in order for the perception of sensation to raise the rate of vibration within itself enough to correspond to a harmonic vibration which can receive vibrations from the feeling parts. Because of the vast differences in the rate of vibration, we can really understand this is a question of harmonies: because none of the centers, or independent minds, can ever really understand the other minds: what they can do is learn to vibrate at correspondent harmonic rates, so that they exchange energies which inform one another into a greater wholeness of Being.  

I can’t explain the whole system here; but an individual who reads what I have read here and then carefully re-reads what Gurdjieff said to Ouspensky on the subject, and what Ouspensky worked out in his chapter on hydrogens and so on, which is highly technical – will understand a lot more about why harmonic vibration is the only way in which the centers can speak to one another.  

Real feeling only comes intermittently once permanent sensation is active; so even when we begin to work within sensation, it’s only a beginning, because we work for long periods of time to concentrate our Being within the sensory perception of our inner conditions, in which we examine quite precisely the separation between the intelligence and sensation—before we eventually create a harmonic resonance that receives a feeling.

There’s a lawful order to this. Once a harmonic resonance has been established, feeling must arrive: it’s the same as when we create an aperture through which water naturally flows. The harmonic resonance of higher levels flows naturally into lower ones when conditions are correct. 

There’s a difference between spiritual and natural conditions, of course, and we’re speaking of spiritual ones here; nonetheless, this corresponds quite exactly to Jeanne de Salzmann’s comment that help will come. It’s lawful that help has to be sent in the form of corresponding vibration once vibrations at a lower level are at a compatible harmonic rate. It flows into Being naturally, without impediment.

 With this, perhaps, we can better intuit how important it is to work quite attentively on the question of sensation: if a permanent sensation of Being becomes active, lawful conditions naturally draw helpful influences down into Being. These come in the form of what we call sacred feelings, or grace. Each of these feeling-perceptions, which are as different from sensation as sensation is from intellect, carries vital information (perceptions which can inwardly form Being) that assists in the acquisition of material. This material, in turn, progressively harmonizes the inner consistency of the intellect and of sensation itself within the body.

This internal consistency — which overcomes the grotesque contradictions we generally inhabit — is essential to the development of harmonic vibration. 

Gurdjieff frequently spoke in his writings about the striking inconsistencies in human behavior, which he ascribed to the results of the organ kundabuffer.  He chose the word very carefully: and because he was a word entomologist of the first order, we can be sure that the root meanings of the word were important to what he meant when he used it. Kunda means vessel in Sanskrit; and buffer,  which in today’s world means something that blocks, originally meant stammer — something that repeats itself over and over. So the vessel is blocked by repetition or habit from receiving the vibrations of feeling. We are stuck at the same rate of vibration, repeating it over and over instead of concentrating it; the harmony can’t develop because we are not raising the inward rate of vibration enough to become worthy vessels for the receiving of the help that would otherwise naturally flow into us.

Wishing the best for you on this day,

Lee

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.