Each person present was then invited to present a two minute account of relevant experiences since the previous time.
In a message from India, BS raised two issues. [Removed at the request of BS.] He applied some techniques given by Charles.T. Tart in his book Living the Mindful Life,
D has been aware of the aging process, aches and pains, falling out with a few friends. He moved into a new flat 6 months ago, and has projects in the pipeline, but can't write, He had written a follow up to one earlier piece of writing. He has been watching all the sport, seeing the challenges, the failures or triumphs - he is aware of his mortality, and that the whole world is in flux politically. He drew a parallel between the TV news coverage on the banker and the Russian Revolution 100 years ago, which had been about the poor rising up because the riches were in the hands of the few. Nothing has changed, we are still in this same state, we are stooping low. Sigmund Freud said humankind hasn't risen that high. He realised the truth of this in himself.
BW said he could so easily not have come to the Meeting. It was a struggle to get there. He has not made progress, instead being caught up in what he was doing externally, not being present with internal exercises. He had felt he could not justify doing the 12pm and 5pm checking of the time. He spent the first week trying to do the reminding task but as for the rest of the month it was not until the day before the Meeting that he remembered. He wondered if this was the consequence of putting effort the month before into the radio play. He had a note on his desk of BS's interpretation of Einstein'a equation
which had pushed him to go further in his writing than he would otherwise have done.
Z spoke of her experience with the time exercise. She hadn't remembered at 12pm or 5pm, but at different times.She had been moved by reading the maxim from the Beelzebub paragraphs:
"If you go on a spree then go the whole hog including the postage."
This is what Gurdjieff did all the time in his life and he went in amazing directions, putting everything into what he did - looking at herself, she didn't do this. She recognised that she was holding back in different ways, and the message from the paragraphs freed her up "to go and get it".
M said a question had arisen in his mind through meditation as to what is the important thing to meditate on. The problem he faced was keeping his mind under control. Not all thoughts that come into his head are going in the direction he wants them to. He thought it important to direct them to the area of greatest importance, for example thinking on how to be a more efficient person, but he finds himself thinking about sport instead. He asked how he could have more control over thoughts and feelings to make progress in this direction.
"R" related that, having suggested the time exercise in the first place, she promptly forgot it and continued as before with the techniques she uses daily to remind her of herself. By trying to connect with the body each day, she notices that the capacities of the body are begining to dimimish, for instance she is unable to walk for hours without hurting. If there is any meaning in her work, it is to integrate it with the body. How the mind wanders in any way it pleases presents a real challenge. She doesn't control it or master it, but needs to work with it rather than against it, to give her energy to work to be in her body, not to travel away from the body. She had been touched by BS's intense experiences related to that.
T had tried the 12pm and 5pm exercise, and did not manage it completely even once. At different times she did remember, and would then start to count from 1 to 60 as an exercise to stay with the remembering, and while counting would try to observe her surroundings at the time, asking herself where she was, who she was with, and what she was doing. The most common activity she had observed was that she was eating!
RM said that what comes to mind while he is studying Gurdjieff material, is that he is on a path of evolution, an evolution of reason. Referring to Gurdjieff's concept of friction, he feels he is up against barriers when he gives an intense attention that opens up options. These barriers enable his reason to get honed. Reason is like a light that continues to grow. He thinks that this is what makes humanity different from animals, which escape the link between awareness and consciousness. The question that comes to his mind is why humanity's reason, reason around the evolution of counsciousness, has grown faster than in other animals? He gave the example of a cat apparently asleep, but alert to its surroundings as shown by its sudden responses from an apparent state of sleep.
E thought that reason on its own is not enough. but has to be with the kindness of humanity. Otherwise living with reason alone is trying to walk on one leg. She had failed with the exercise of checking the time, even though her clock has an alarm. She is not in control; in some ways she finds this hard to believe, but it seems as if it is so.
The contributions were then discussed.
BW asked for elaboration about integration of the body, as described by "R". RM said we are trying to be more harmonious, and in balance. If there are tensions one cannot be in balance. Tension pulls the attention from being free. We tend to ignore the body a lot of the time. "R" explained that people talk about what they are thinking about. She could not really call it talking about consciousness, it is just thinking that is being talked about - just thinking is resistance to being present in the body. Z referred to Gurdjieff's concept of three-brained beings; mind, body and emotion. We are not fully present, we are not fully human. A previous group she was in worked with the senses, the body, "to be here and now", to speak to our tensions, and consider what the tensions are saying. GC said that when not thinking, we tend to display what is going on inside us, to project what is going on in the body. BW felt he was conscious of being in his body, but whatever his understanding of that state was, experienced a resistance. "R" thought it an excellent line of study, to experience and investigate in oneself. D pointed out that he needs to be thinking in order to write - if he became present he wouldn't be able to write.
Regarding the exercise of checking the time twice a day, GC said he had been doing it every hour, as a discipline to remember himself; likewise he was trying to avoid eating when not hungry, to see how powerful his resolution wasn't.
The Meeting was about to start reading from Beelzebub's Tales, when GC enquired why we were reading this book when it was so difficult. In fact he had been reading it for years and still finds it difficult. This prompted a discussion on the issue, after which, with less time remaining, consideration of the text resumed.
Gurdjieff tells a tale of a Russian merchant who buys a book for his son, and queries the price in the bookshop.
"But it is marked here forty-five kopecks. Why do you ask sixty?" Thereupon the salesman, making as is said the "oleaginous" face proper to all salesmen, replied that ... fifteen kopecks were added for postage. ... our Russian merchant who was perplexed ... again pondered, this time like an English professor who has invented a capsule for castor oil, and then suddenly turned to his friend and delivered himself for the first time on Earth of the verbal formulation which, expressing in its essence an indubitable objective truth, has since assumed the character of a saying. And he then put it to his friend as follows: "Never mind, old fellow, we'll take the book. Anyway we're on a spree today, and
'if you go on a spree then
go the whole hog including the postage.' "
The narrator continues:
" ... as soon as I had cognized all this, something very strange, ... immediately began, and for a rather long time continued to proceed in me; ... after the lapse of some time suddenly ... replaced by such a peaceful inner condition as I experienced in later life once only, when the ceremony of the great initiation into the Brotherhood of the 'Originators of making butter from air' was performed over me ..."
T wondered if there was any significance in the fact that oil had been referred to three times, with the mention of castor oil, the use of the adjective "oleaginous", and the reference to making butter from air. RM suggested that oil might symbolise personality, and air correspond to essence.
At the close of the Meeting, RM recommended a variant on the previous month's exercise that he had been trying out. On checking the time twice a day, he has been counting from 1 to 9 and down to 1 again, several times. GC gave out printed sheets of an Osho article about self-remembering, another on Essence and Personality (by Maurice Nicoll), and a page he had prepared of two psychological parables.
