Notes on the Inner Meaning of Conscious Labor, part III

If we want to understand the concept of duty — an extraordinarily important feature in Gurdjieff’s teaching — and we want to understand obedience and obligation, we must understand it from this perspective, because conscious labor is the foundational entity behind these others. I have a duty to pay; I have an obligation to pay.

 The word duty means a tax or fee, due because of a moral or legal obligation. The word obligation comes from the Latin obligāre, to pledge or bind: and to pledge, in its term, it is a solemn promise, a vow, or a guarantee. 

We hence bring ourselves to the inevitable understanding — instinctively sensed, if the harmonic vibration of Being is intensified — that we both owe something for our Being, our life, and that we are obliged to pay for it.  

Here we see that the term conscious labor is directly tied to Gurdjieff’s fourth obligolnian striving: 

…the striving from the beginning of their existence to pay for their arising and their individuality as quickly as possible…

 Yet this payment does not consist of some outer set of actions, and it does not consist of adjusting one’s thought processes to have a different or better idea about everything. 

Nor is it an adjustment of attitude, although that figures in. 

The payment has an essential metaphysical character embedded in accepting the relationship between Being and the harmonic vibration that creates it: a binding of the physical, this body, with the metaphysical, the harmonic vibration at the foundation of the solar system (and the universe) that creates it. Once again, in terms of yoga references, this relates to the sacred OM,  which Gurdjieff recast as the sacred Aieioiuoa— perhaps a more accurate rendition, since the sound originates in the angelic realms, whose languages are more precise, and captures the sense of movement and the requirement of relationship within cosmic vibration instead of sounding a single tone. But this isn’t to say that OM is bad, mind you: just that it is partial, like the individual branches of yoga that became divided and concentrate on developing specific and separate qualities within Being, rather than engaging in an overall harmonic raising of the rate of vibration.

 Payment consists of coming into relationship with the organic sense of Being, and engaging in conscious labor imposed by the demand of this harmonic vibration and its wish for us. That wish is much more powerful and higher than our own wish, connected as it is with the physical manifestation of the Holy Spirit and the flow of Grace through the solar system and even the universe. 

This labor cannot, in the end, be in any sense of its existence considered apart from intentional suffering, the other essential “shock” within Gurdjieff’s system.  Again, here, there are many different esoteric meanings to this, but I’m concentrating on the one related to the energetic inward work necessary for Being.

In the engagement with the inward rate of vibration,  conscious labor prepares Being for the receiving of even higher rates of vibration by rearranging the harmonic quality of the organism at its molecular or cellular level. I use both terms, because the reorganization is definitely molecular and is sense that way energetically, yet what it changes is the essential nature of the cells and the way they communicate with one another. 

Although the biological aspects of this are probably quite fascinating and could instruct us a great deal about the relationship between harmonic vibration and the arising of life itself, it’s not the focus of this particular essay. The point is that the harmonic rate of vibration of the body can be raised in such a way that the energies corresponds to much higher energies. 

This does not mean that the rate of vibration is raised all the way up to those higher energies, because that would be impossible. One note cannot "become" another note — if we want to use Gurdjieff’s arcane chemical notations, we would say that Sol 12 can’t be the same as Fa 12,  for example, and so on. What his notation means is that the two notes continue to vibrate at their own different rates, but have acquired a character — the numeric 12 — that brings them into harmonic relationship.  And it's this confluence of harmonic vibration that takes place if conscious labor concentrates the substances, the actual physical vibrations within the molecules, that form individual Being. 

It prepares the ground for the arrival of feeling, which vibrates at much higher rates. And although the demand and the submission that’s engaged in conscious labor are essential parts of what help to dissolve the ego, it's only the arrival of feeling as a consonant vibration of a higher nature that truly loosens the tyrannical hold that our ego has on our Being. 

Again likening it to yoga practices, this is the untying of the knots or granthis  that block the flow of energy within Being. These knots, which are variously described as blockages in the chakras at various specific locations, psychological obstacles, energetic disruptions, or what have you, are all in the end manifestations of ego. 

While it may well be possible to cut these knots with various yogic knives, the harmonic approach that Gurdjieff took has an essential intelligence that avoids doing spiritual violence, which puts the development of a person at risk, perhaps even more so than the one-sided development that can take place if one follows only a single path.

Wishing the best for you on this day,

Lee

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.