The Remembrance of Things Past, from the Gurdjieff Point of View.

 

April 14, redux of the redux

Let me be clear, the title of this post lies. There is no Gurdjieff point of view here. 

It is just Lee’s point of view; it has been polluted by "Gurdjieff," rather thoroughly, but in the end has almost nothing to do with him, because 99.99% of Lee is Lee and not Gurdjieff. 

As with all the other additives that have been mixed into him (Lee), "Gurdjieff" is just a few molecules in a very complex chemistry of Being that has countless other elements and molecular structures in it. You might argue that "Gurdjieff" is the carbon molecule in this chemistry, or the oxygen; that is, that it plays critical structural roles. Maybe that’s the case. If so, perhaps Lee is not feeling quite himself. But what you are getting, nonetheless, is Lee, not Gurdjieff, so blame him loudly for whatever follows.

The contemplation of one’s past and the digestion of both the fiber and nourishment that passes into one’s being as the vessel receives the flow of the world rely on an attention that can make use of retrospection, that is, re-examination. 

The word remorse means, more or less, biting into something all over again; it's as though we eat the material that flowed into us a second time, in order to extract more nourishment. As we grow older, if we’re rightly formed, the feeling-parts of ourselves, the ones with the greatest sensitivity, become capable of digesting much finer food, especially food related to the action of suffering and remorse, which is a food generally rejected in the earlier stages of life. 

Now it becomes a taste that one senses might have value; and one begins to examine everything one has ever done, in the nearest sense one can get to the word “everything,” in order to find its real value.

That real value is only derived in the sense that one understands, from the remorse and the remembering, perhaps or perhaps not in this order, the following things:

1. The absolute, irrevocable, and objective mystery of life.

2. The haunting sense of one’s own nothingness.

3. An overwhelming organic remorse for every deed that failed to honor relationship.

I’ll confess, this is a rough list and I just made it up; but I think it captures the essence of the affirming, denying, and reconciling elements of this action which takes place in a vessel that has reached a certain age, assuming it managed to rid itself of at least some small portion of the bullshit. Perhaps we just clear enough of it away to uncover an aperture through which we can see something real; that would be a start. 

However we proceed, however, we must be ruthless about it.

This reminds me of a question I asked myself last night. There was considerable discussion about impartiality and what it means. During the conversation, I asked myself, “where does the measurement of Being begin?” 

We all want to measure ourselves from within as to how we are; but measurement always takes place from one point to another. When I measure an object I always have to make sure that the beginning of the measuring tape is at exactly the right place; and so I need to be clear about where I’m measuring from before I can measure anything, anywhere, in any way. If I don’t know where I begin measuring, the measurement will always be inaccurate. 

This is one of the reasons I need to be quite clear, in the first place, about where I am and who I am. This is a matter in which some amount of unity of Being serves very well indeed — in fact one begins to see that it’s indispensable.

So the measurement of Being begins where I am as the world flows in. All of the bullshit is politely asked to step aside and sit in the chair over there in the corner, where it will probably nag and whine; but this is how the classroom is constructed. The education is in the relationship, the return to the moment and what is happening: irrevocable, true, like the death of siblings. Thinking of the death of a sibling or loved one, as it happens, can be a galvanizing factor in the grounding of the current. Thinking of death in any real way, in point of fact, has a way of shrinking the BS into a much smaller part of the corner. 

The issue here is that our concept of death is usually, like everything else in us, a comic book concept; and what it needs to become is an organic concept that is rooted in our sixth sense, that is, sensation.

The world flows in. 

Here I am. 

If parts one, two, and three of my formula are all applied here where I am, the taste of something new arises. 

It would be a disservice to to describe it exactly or even imprecisely; its reliability and the magic of its action within Being rely on the fact that it can never be correctly expressed. 

That taste, like all tastes, makes no sound but lives in silence, at the point where life enters in and it is evaluated in terms of its nourishment. If the spiritual tongue, the tongue of my soul, isn't sufficiently developed, I won’t distinguish between what is nourishing and what isn’t; so I need an educated pallet.

And I think this is enough on the matter for now.

Hurrah for using all three parts today. Be well.

warmly, 

Lee

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.