Notes on Feeling, part 2: What is the aim of work?

The second of three parts.

I speak much of feeling these days, and there is a reason.

There is a long period in inner work where, although aspiration is high and belief is strong, nothing more takes place than that material is gathered. This is because the concentration of force, the attraction of inner gravity (what Gurdjieff called magnetic center) has to become sufficient to reach a critical mass. 

This phrase has a double meaning, because the mass does not just have to reach a certain threshold, which is what the phrase implies; it also has to have the ability, through its own weight, to engage in a critique. This word is derived from the Greek kritike tekhne meaning a critical art. It is an art, not a science; that is to say, it is not arrived at just by the mechanical actions of formula and material deduction but also by the agency and craft of intuition and feeling. Ultimately, of course, the word critic comes from kritikos, related to the word krinein, to judge.

What we are talking about, here then, is a dual art. It is not just the art of discrimination; it is the art of judgment. We arrive at judgment not just by a formula — that is mechanical judgment. We also arrive at it through intuition in feeling, that is, through an active faculty that allows us to care. This is why it’s functionally impossible for formulaic interpretations of work to meet the requirement.

The properties of our Being that allow us to discriminate and judge have to acquire enough matter (that selfsame critical mass) to have sufficient weight in our inner work such that inner work becomes voluntary. That is to say, my work is no longer a thing, an object I push around using the outer force and formatory action of my psyche, where I argue and cajole, but a living entity that exerts its own influence—which is in subtle and certain ways quite definitely and visibly (from within, that is) different than my ordinary self.

This critical mass has the consistent and irrevocable property of centering itself in my sensation. The sensation is the only part of me which,, if awakened, remains functionally removed from the intellectual and emotional arguments of the other two centers. It stands apart of itself and within itself and forms the core, the magnetic body, of the planet – soul which then durably acquires the charge of its power, the resonance of its harmonics, and the material influence of its gravity. 

This alone creates the stability that the other two centers can rely on.

Then, the planet of the inner life can begin to form an atmosphere which will even, over time, acquire oxygen in exactly the same way that the planet Earth eventually developed an oxygenated atmosphere. 

This results in the arising of a new kind of life, an evolutionary life of the soul which mirrors in its own development the evolution of more and more complex life on earth. Life on earth as we see and understand it today is the feeling-body of the planet. We should consider this very carefully because we are in the process of destroying it; and the deterioration in man’s psyche and the social institutions we have is taking place in part because we are destroying the feeling-body we dwell in. It is very much like a form of insanity or mental illness in which the emotional center is torn down by its own intellectual part, and everything else goes with it.

In any event, the formation of this inner planet with its atmosphere and life all center around the gravity of the planet we form within our Being. 

The aim of sensation and its development is a fundamental part of this process.

Yet that is just the beginning; because all along, our inner planet is receiving light from the sun. We begin by forming our planet through the magnetic center, a planet of sensation; and yet that planet of sensation receives a light, an inflow of higher energies from divine sources that will, if there is a planet correctly formed to receive them — I stress that remark — form an emotional body, a feeling body. 

Our inner earth will give birth to life.

For ourselves, the feeling-body is the “sun” of our own inner solar system: and no matter how powerful they may seem to us, how much they drive us to the heights of joy or terror, no matter how many outer triumphs and catastrophes they produce, our ordinary emotions are as different from this feeling body, this inner sun, as night is from day. Indeed, our ordinary emotions are night; the valley of the shadow of death.

And even here things fall short; because in the creation of the feeling-body, all we effect is the creation of a mirror that receives the light of a much higher feeling. All of this is deeply tied to Mr. Gurdjieff’s discussion of the Sorrow of our Common Creator, that most essential substance which penetrates the fabric of the universe. Without the feeling-body, all of this remains nothing more than a set of ideas; and, as we know, ideas—you argue about.

Even Gurdjieff’s ideas.

In the proper formation of the body of sensation and the body of feeling, there are no arguments. The moment you encounter arguments between people, you can know whether or not they have a properly formed body of sensation or (much more rarely) a proper body of feeling. Swedenborg wrote much of his meetings with spirits formed mostly of intellect, who are extraordinarily clever in their prosecutions but actually quite dull and dead inside. Each was a victim of his or her own insanities or, as Gurdjieff so often referred to it, the idee fixe.

You may think that people who are “serious” or appear to have “authority” are the real deal, because it’s the habit of human beings to judge what is “real” according to these power possessing beings, who more often than not are actually what what Gurdjieff called “hassnamusses,” because they seem to have some kind of power. 

And they do; because it is entirely possible to form both the body of sensation in the body of feeling in a wrong way. This is what Gurdjieff meant by “wrong crystallization.” In essence the phrase denotes, to one degree or another, an individual not perpetually and deeply troubled by their conscience. Gurdjieff’s “evil inner god of self-calming” is in every case at attempt to avoid this action.

If the body of sensation is properly formed, it creates the organic sense of Being; and this is inseparable from the sense of mortality, which is why it represents the additional “organ” mentioned at the very end of Beelzebub’s Tales to his Grandson. (See The Sixth Sense). Said organ, if implanted in a human being, reminds them at all times of their own death. 

This particular organ, should one acquire it, is the active organic vehicle of sensation — that is to say, it creates a harmonic compatibility in the current that carries the inflow of higher energies into one’s inner center of gravity, the magnetic center of the planet. 

There is a specific and lawful result of this action, which is the activation of voluntary remorse of conscience and the consequent humility that follows it. While this current will not flow at exactly the same level of intensity at all times in Being, at least a trickle of it will always be present, in the same way that a pilot light functions on a gas stove. And without the action of this humility, the foundation for the feeling-body will not be laid. To be sure, remorse will come and go: but for remorse to make a difference, it must stay, and this must be an aim.

The feeling body always, always — if it is rightly formed — crystallizes exclusively around this humility, and to the extent that it crystallizes correctly, it becomes durable and transparent in such a way that the light of the sorrow — for it is a lightness and a joy, not a weight and a heaviness — flows into the soul as food. Until this happens, we are utterly opaque to its influence.

There are many consequences of this as well. One forms two additional bodies; the inner solar system acquires the ability to function within the light of its own sun, which is dependent in its turn on the galaxy it exists in.

These are much greater questions. Yet a rough sketch of the actual aim of the inner work we engage in has now been achieved. Everything else around it is a subset; and the philosophies, arguments, and endless milling around within the ideas lives within that subset, not within the lawful actions as I have described them here.

In a certain sense, if you wish to work, you can forget about everything else and just concentrate on acquiring the material needed to make your inner sensation permanent. This is the method whereby your inward Being can acquire the critical mass discussed earlier in this essay.

Without that critical mass, you’ll become very clever, no doubt; yet you’ll always see yourself outside yourself looking in, instead of feeling yourself inside yourself looking out. 

May you be well within today.

Lee

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.