A Planetary Sense of Being—Part IV: Gravity and Sensation

Resurrection and Damnation, from the Tympanum at St. Foy in Conques

…my body could be the greatest support for experiencing my existence. It is on the level of the earth

and draws its strength from it. The action of our life is on this level, this sphere, not somewhere up in the air. I have to feel the body on the earth, the ground. I do this by sensation—sensing its weight, its

mass, and, more important, sensing that there is a force inside, an energy. Through sensation I need to feel a connection with my body so deep it becomes like a communion.

Jeanne De Salzmann, The Reality of Being, p. 63 

This Work is a school for developing a new center of gravity.

Jeanne De Salzmann, The Reality of Being, p. 112

In understanding this sensation of Being, and the magnetic effect of its action, we can understand that it creates our individuality and Being in exactly the same way that a planet draws itself together and acquires a magnetic field. It’s related to gravity and the action of attraction:

1. Gravity, one of the least understood forces in the universe, causes an attraction of particles that seems to be unmediated by any visible physical force. This is because gravity develops through concentrations of emanation — metaphysical, quantum-related elements.  

2. Every concentration of harmonic vibrations (emergence of a material entity from the quantum background) involves the invocation of a center of gravity in which waves are concentrated and brought into relationship in intensified ways. 

3. When we develop an organic sensation of being, we are participating in the creation of our own inner center of gravity.

I’ve discussed this in other places; yet it’s important to understand its nature as a cosmological function. When Gurdjieff discussed the idea of magnetic center with Ouspensky, it was then as it is now largely interpreted as a center of gravity that attracted some kind of confluence of ideas. 

In reality, though, he was talking about the acquisition of the particles of emanation, of the development of an inner sensation of Being:

The result of the influences who  source lies outside life collect together within him, he remembers them together, feels them together. They begin to form within him a certain whole…  The results of these influences collect together within him and after certain time they form within him a kind of magnetic center, which begins to attract to itself kindred influences and in this manner it grows.”

— In Search of the Miraculous, page 200

 Here we find many clues. Gurdjieff is describing the development of organic sensation; this is a precursor to organic feeling, and he says that one first remembers and then feels. It ties the understanding of magnetic center and self remembering to organic sensation, which is the first sensation that can acquire and then feel influences whose source lies outside life. 

These are those selfsame planetary influences related to the magnetic field of the planet discussed earlier parts of this essay. Magnetic center, in other words, is a function of the organic sense of Being and has nothing to do with simply becoming intellectually aware of ideas about work and ways; it’s about receiving influences, sensing them, and feeling them. 

Here we see a different principle being illustrated, one that re-casts our concept of self-remembering.

To remember is not to think: it’s to sense in order that one may feel.

We encounter here the same ideas Gurdjieff expressed many years later during the war in Paris, that the organic sensation creates one’s sense of individuality. By the time he put it this way, his awareness and understanding of the matter was far more concentrated, first by life experience and then by the war; but the fundamental ideas had not changed over all these years.

We should note, furthermore, the important presence of the word “influences” — forces that flow into us. Jeanne de Salzmann used this word many times; and it was certainly very current when I first entered the Gurdjieff work in the 1980s, when my teacher talked about it frequently. It has fallen out of use, yet it still carries vital information. 

All of this is further related to Swedenborg’s discussion of the inflow, that is, the direct influence of divinity upon our being which is acquired through a sensation and then — more importantly than anything else — an influence of feeling that comes into us and inwardly forms an intelligence that mirrors God.

 The inward center of gravity, created through organic sensation, has at its center a stillness that can receive this intelligence — but feeling will not arrive unless this place is well-formed within Being.

Part five of five of in this series will publish on June 5. 

Wishing the best for you on this day,

Lee

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.