Time and the Gone Aways

After a minute's silence, those present spoke for up to two minutes on relevant experiences from the previous month.

D had been to visit M, who was in Casualty at the hospital, having had a fall at his residential home. He went to visit M at the Care Home a couple of days later. M was in a big room, sitting straight - he would suddenly slip away, wondering who he was. D was wondering again, how much the Work helps with old age.

L said he had found B's exercise, with the hands, good. He had remembered that a similar exercise had been tried before, suggested by GC, involving focusing on other parts of the body. He hadn't done it before going to sleep and hadn't experienced the hands coming to mind during the night. This exercise seemed to be testing the point that the dream and the day are both part of our existence. He was not sure the exercise from the extract is from Gurdjieff. There are no references to it anywhere else. The exercise reminded him of a to-do list - we can forget what we are planning to do and are reminded when we see the list. It is symbolic of the possibility of a single common identity within a person.

"R" said she had been teaching, watching her student, giving attention. The student was trying to do what her fingers are automatically able to do. "R" does not have the means of transmission of her skill. She is left handed, so most people do it differently, and so she has to do it differently. She has had to learn more about patience. There are two factors involved. A tendency to be lazy, and a tendency to be impatient.

B had found the exercise to be like the one with keys, but there are more opportunities to be aware of hands in the new exercise. His interest in his work, acting, seems to have changed. His coming here doesn't seem to have to be integrated into everything, and so it becomes more significant to him.

RM had been away for a couple of months, on a cruise to the Baltic Sea and the Northern Lights. It was a continuation of previous cruises.

He had been asked to do more meditation classes, of which he did about forty. His technique of meditation involved doing two things at a time. Like counting and being aware of a part of the body. This helped him and his pupils become more aware. He had been asked when he was coming back on his next cruise.

T realised she had been painting her hands as part of her work on a self-portrait, but there was in fact only a fleeting connection with the exercise, which had seemed at first as a gift but was in reality very difficult to do. Other times she remembered was at the sink, washing up.

The message from BS was read out. [Omitted at the request of BS.]

The Meeting then moved to responses to initial contributions.

Responding to D, RM said that it is irrelevant whether the Work helps with old age. The important thing is how he responds to the present.

D asked "R" about the link between her account of teaching and the hands exercise. "R" said her hands had perfected fine jewellery techniques with thread and beads. She can do it without thinking, but to explain it means putting attention on it, and being receptive to other people trying to learn. Eventually it becomes second nature, but initially there is a lot of fumbling. T said that when she is doing something with her hands, there is something else observing. Some other presence that we are trying to make more of. In order to be present, it seems we have to be aware of that as well.

D said he was wondering whether, for M, there would have been any difference if he hadn't done the Work? T asked D if he was asking what is the point of the Work or what is the point of someone's life? She said "Whether or not you do the Work isn't going to stop physical death. The Work isn't to prevent something in the future, it is about how we are living in our present. We are all going to die, whether we do the Work or we don't." RM asked D who he was responding to. "R" said that she values that D was responding with feeling.

Responding to B, L wondered, although he had found the exercise useful, whether it had a direct link with Gurdjieff. The author Carlos Castenada described exercises given to him by his teacher Don Juan, which have been associated by some writers with Gurdjieff, although L has been unable to find any corroboration for a link. Although Don Juan might not have existed, the books are no less wonderful. He was reminded of the earlier popular esoteric writer Lobsang Ramba (original name Cyril Hoskin), and Max Erhmann, whose great poem, Desiderata, written in 1927, is believed by many to have been written hundreds of years before. RM said that, similarly, the name Lao Tse may be made up. T commented that Gurdjieff made up Beelzebub, a fictional character in order to speak his ideas through the character and his stories. D said he had been reading The Daemon, by Anthony Peake, which describes everything as being a hologram. Time and space and man.

 

RM said that this ties in with C influence. If you meditate deeply, you can link with any part of the universe. There is a scientific theory that the universe is made up of holograms and so are our minds. Higher consciousness is called the right brain. Doing these exercises is trying to get inside the right hand side of brain. D said that if you can connect with this Daemon, it knows everything, and works in symbols. He mentioned how famous scientists who had slept on a problem and got the answer.

"R" said she had had a strong reaction to the contributions of BS, and talked of the importance of practice as opposed to thinking. The moments of presence are the important ones. L said that formulas as used by BS are useful, and formulas of this nature had been used by the psychoanalysts Wilfred Bion and Jacques Lacan. The accounts were an honest report of his experiences.

At 9:45 the Meeting resumed the reading of Beelzebub's Tales.

“...It must be noticed that the twelve ‘Krentonalnianrevolutions’ of the said Moon do not correspond exactly to a single ‘Krentonalnian-revolution’ of their planet round its sun and therefore they have made some compromise...

“But as in general, my boy, you do not yet know of the exceptional peculiarity of this cosmic phenomenon Time, you must first be told that genuine Objective Science formulates this cosmic phenomenon thus:

“Time in itself does not exist; there is only the totality of the results ensuing from all the cosmic phenomena present in a given place..."

B said it was hard to understand time and space anyway, even without the long words. RM was reminded of Heinlein's novel Stranger in a Strange Land whose Martian protagonist, Valentine Smith, encounters difficulties in communication with people on Earth. T talked of languages being social constructs and meaning something when everyone speaks the same language but that when you don't know a language the sounds can be heard said but no meaning is communicated. When we speak in our own language we experience it as if it exists in a real sense and this experience is bolstered up by others, but language doesn't exist in any real concrete sense, language is symbolic existing in and between people.

D asked if the long words were there to wake us up. The words were very creative. B said that he always feels there is something of use, even if he doesn't understand it, in this book. T gave, as an example, the word trogoautoegocratic. "R" said that they may have been put together from languages he knew, like Armenian and Russian. T found that the mixture of foreign words and every day language makes her want to read them. B said that he got the same feeling as with BS's contributions; hard to understand, but a gut feeling that there is something there.

“Thus, my boy, uniquely Time alone, or, as it is sometimes called, the ‘Heropass,’ has no source from which its arising should depend, but like ‘Divine-Love’ flows always, as I have already told you, independently by itself, and blends proportionately with all the phenomena present in the given place and in the given arisings of our Great Universe."

D thought this described appositely the hologram of which he had been speaking earlier.

“ ... although according to our time-calculations you are still only like a boy of twelve ...  yet according to their subjective understanding ... you have already existed by their time-calculation, not twelve years but the whole of four thousand six hundred and sixty-eight years."

L thought this passage highlighted that time is subjective. For example, a mayfly lives only for a day. Yet he saw a slight flaw in Gurdjieff's writing. He has Beelzebub living on Mars for a long period, apparently experiencing time normally, but at his rate of experiencing time, sunrise and sunset would alternate immediately, the sun streaking across the sky every minute. "R" said that their experience of time would have adjusted to local conditions.

"R" had recently watched a programme in which Brian Cox discussed some of the concepts in Doctor Who. It had been hard to understand but was very good.

RM had been on a cruise. People were on average in their seventies. All remarked how fast time goes. He told them it's just that they have more ways of falling asleep. Concentrating on something for two minutes makes time slow down.

Before closing the Meeting, there was a discussion on what exercise to adopt for the ensuing month. It was decided this would be to pay immense attention to the hands, once a day, for one minute.

Helping Hands

The Meeting began with a one minute silence to set the mood. Thereafter up to two minutes was available, for those who wanted, to give an account of their relevant experiences over the previous month.

D spoke first, explaining his resistance to coming to the Meeting. He had a cold and a cough and wasn't going to come. He dosed himself with garlic and ginger, lemon and honey drinks, and Carbolic soap! They all helped get him to the Meeting, and although he got out of bed only an hour before it started, he was pleased that he even arrived early.

L said he had had more success with the exercise set last month of doing two tasks per day, although this success came only during the final week. He has experienced a different kind of presence when doing planned self-willed activity. The activity felt more significant. As promised the previous time he had added a page about kundabuffer to the website, listing all Gurdjieff’s references to it encountered so far in the reading of Beelzebub’s Tales. He had achieved doing two tasks per day over several days in the previous week. This felt as if it worked directly counter to the influence of kundabuffer. He had also experienced a reciprocal action. A day ago, after doing one of these activities through will-power of his own volition, he discovered a musician had simultaneously sent a long technical email about performance issues, a similar act of will. He considered that out of the large number of people busily involved in activities and traveling and doing this and that, there might be very few doing acts of their own volition, uninfluenced by society or employers. In the art studios, some of the people are doing things of their own volition.

Z had started with good intentions, but they had faded away and she did not manage to do anything.

T had not remembered what the exercise was for the first two weeks, and then had difficulty remembering to write down the tasks and remembering what they were. She had only managed to do one task. She experienced trying to do the exercise and realised that although it sounded simple it had several stages to it, and each had to be jumped over, like several hurdles. First she had to remember to do the tasks. Second she had to be in the right place. Third, she had to be at the right time. Fourth, she actually had to do them.

Being late made B wonder how seriously he takes this work. He had set the alarm, but arrived late, and thought he was treating it like a hobby. Now he was not treating it very seriously. It didn’t seem too difficult but he was being lazy. He had succeeded in doing the exercise five or six times. He did not feel at ease about the things he was not doing.

"R" had been travelling, and had missed two months. She had resolved to listen to people. She has a bad back and needs to do exercises for it. The worthy excuses she comes up with for not doing them use as much energy as would making the effort. Listening to people is a vague task. She can always tell herself she is listening, but most of the time she is asleep.

All those who wanted to contribute had done so, and the Meeting then moved to responses.

D asked how M was, and it was explained that M was in hospital. He then observed that T was noting down all comments, and said that he had read the website and that it was accurate. He said she was good at doing it and that he was praising her. T responded that typing what people are saying is a function or role.

B said he was not sure that what he says communicates what he feels.

D asked L to elaborate on the connection between his action and the musician. L said that it might be fanciful to feel a connection, but these two self-willed acts happened at the same moment. Maybe his doing one triggered something else to happen, like a stone dropped in a pool of human activity making ripples. He cited the phenomenon of the hundredth monkey (which has not been scientifically confirmed), and mentioned the theory of “morphic resonance” of Rupert Sheldrake.

RM said it takes more energy not to do things than to do them. A state of apathy takes a lot of energy because it is negative. Energy to do something is about coming in and focusing. It is hard to switch from one to the other.

On the theme of alienation, D referred to J. D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, and The Outsider by Camus, which would be on Radio 3 that evening at 10pm.

There was some discussion of anger as a form of energy. “R” quoted Blake from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell:

The tygers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction.

L cautioned against the popular belief that artists are and should be passionate in their work, also quoting Blake from Auguries of Innocence:

To be in a Passion you Good may Do 
But no Good if a Passion is in you

As an example he mentioned the ultimate romantic musical masterpiece, Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, which though passionate, was the result of years of trying out different presentations of the tunes and harmonies, as Leonard Bernstein explained in his first Omnibus TV Lecture.

GC said he gets wrapped up in that passion, acting angry when not angry. Charisma does not always lead to good results. The relationship with self is the problem. How seriously do you believe the propaganda put out? There is only a war within if you think there is. You are not your mind. You don't need to use the mind. A person who surrenders is no longer in the war. Surrender is the state of acceptance that you are not in the war. Changing your state is to participate in a battle.

At 10:30am it was time to resume the reading of Beelzebub’s Tales.

In his fable about the difficulty of making significant change, Gurdjieff has the king return to power in the city of Samlios after the revolutionary period.

And when the revolutionary psychosis had quite died down, King Appolis returned to the city of Samlios and … when the earlier policy of King Appolis towards his subjects had been re-established, then the citizens of this community resumed filling the treasury with money as usual and carrying out the directions of their King, and the affairs of the community settled again into the former already established tempo.

In a final irony, the young man who had so railed against tax collection is fated to participate in it.

Sketch by Albrecht Durer

As for our naive, unfortunate countryman who was the cause of it all, it was so painful to him that he would no longer remain upon that planet that had proved so disastrous for him, but he returned with us to the planet Mars.

And later on he became there an even excellent bailiff for all the beings of our tribe.

Following the reading, there was a discussion on what exercise to adopt for the coming month. B suggested a technique in which people visualise their hands, based on an exercise to develop lucid dreaming, from the point of view that the Work is similarly an attempt to become awake and aware within a dream.

Possessions and Regressions

The meeting began at 9 am with a one minute silence. Each person who wanted then spoke for up to two minutes about relevant experiences over the previous month.

B had missed the previous meeting to go to a wedding. He had found the exercise from the Meeting two months before (of opening doors with the least familiar hand) the most useful since he started attending, but in fact he found it engendered more self-awareness when he failed to remember to do it and realised subsequently, compared to successfully using the alternative hand.

D had been reading Kierkegaard, whom he said wrote that it is impossible to be present but that one can get glimpses. He recalled a saying attributed to Plutarch: “What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.” This was why he keeps coming to the Meetings. D also observed that there was no longer a clock on the wall of the Meeting room, and that he was finding that disturbing.

RM had observed during the month that the way in which we acquire objects is comparable to the way ideas become crystallised, in the way described by Gurdjieff in Beelzebub’s Tales.

Z had found the exercise quite good personally; it gave her a sense of achievement. She had also been to Glastonbury, which had energised her as always, but the effect waned afterwards, which she had found interesting.

L had attempted the exercise, with limited success. This suggested that free will is an illusion. He had achieved the exercise before, then increasing the quota of tasks to a day, then three, and so on. This eventually had led to late nights finishing the tasks.

[Removed at the request of BS.]

The Meeting then turned to responses to these contributions.

Addressing D, GC asked him what do we mean by being present. To him it is being without thoughts, and as soon as he realises he is in the state, the state finishes. He has heard advice from others about being consciously aware of a part of the body but was not sure this had any benefit. D said he had found standing on one leg a useful exercise. Z agreed, saying it made her feel more whole, and alive. D wondered if being present was a different experience for everyone? B said that he felt he had more options to do things when he feels he is being present.

GC then asked what does the phrase eat or be eaten mean? L said that this could be interpreted on an emotional energy level, in the sense that people watching a TV show were having their energy sapped, literally eaten away, by it. Z said she would rather live her life than watch TV. L talked of the distinction between consumers and content creators in the media.

At 10:30 the reading of Beelzebub’s Tales continued.

Referring to an appeal from Earth for help resolving a crisis there, Gurdjieff has Beelzebub tell his grandson:

At first I tried to help them while remaining on the planet Mars, but when I became certain that it would be impossible to do anything effective from the planet Mars, I decided to descend to the planet Earth and there, on the spot, to find some way out.

GC suggested there may be some symbolism to the plotline of going from Mars to Earth, which might represent going from a finer state of consciousness to one less fine.

Later the author brings in his concept of kundabuffer again:

It is necessary to premise just here that at the period of my first descent in person on to this planet, the organ Kundabuffer was no longer in the three-brained beings who interest you.

And it was only in some of the three-brained beings there that various consequences of the properties of that for them maleficent organ had already begun to be crystallized.

In the period to which this tale of mine refers, one of the consequences of the properties of this organ which had already become thoroughly crystallized in a number of beings there, was that consequence of the property which, while the organ Kundabuffer itself was still functioning in them had enabled them very easily and without any 'remorse-of-conscience' not to carry out voluntarily any duties taken upon themselves or given them by a superior. But every duty they fulfilled was fulfilled only from the fear and apprehension of 'threats' and 'menaces' from outside.

GC and D discussed what the term kundabuffer meant, and whether there is any link with kundalini. L said that as far as he recalled, it was mentioned in Beelzebub’s Tales in connection with the collision of a meteor with the Earth. As there was no consensus among the attendees on what it meant, L said that he would add a link at the top of the blog to a webpage listing in detail the chronology of Gurdjieff’s usage of the term kundabuffer within Beelzebub’s Tales.

At 10:30 the attendees discussed what exercise to adopt during the coming month, and it was agreed to repeat the exercise of the previous month, but to attempt two tasks daily instead of one.

Castles in the Air

There was an initial silence of one minute, and then each attendee who wished to gave an account of relevant experiences from the previous month.

Z said that she always seems to be a month behind with the exercises. She has started to squirt washing up liquid with her right hand instead of her left. She has been standing on one foot and observed that her whole body seemed to come alive! She felt quite conscious with this exercise, and had found it very useful. She has done it a few times and will continue.

RM had been involved in a long term project attempting to rewrite the Tao Te Ching in his own words, in order to try to get meaning from it. Its attitude to ideas is that they are mostly untrue things that we acquire, which crystallize into gospel. How true we believe things are! People like to hear ideas, and what they believe builds on that. What he is trying to do now is work on being present, on exercises like wherever he is standing to deliberately go slightly off-balance. He is realising how fragile we are as human beings.

T had been following events in Syria. In the current chapter of Beelzebub’s Tales, Gurdjieff describes warfare as what humans do to each other. She had seen a current photo from Egypt of a woman a holding up a white stick and confronting a boy soldier, his gasmask pushed to the top of his head and wearing body armour. It seemed as if she was talking or shouting in earnest to him and he appeared to be listening to her; she had his attention. It showed a human interaction amid fighting and at the same time showed each in role, playing  their part in the wider dispute, each identified with opposite sides. T had also been trying the exercise of putting the key in the lock of the front door with the other hand when she arrived home and had failed every time remembering only before or after the event.

D had been thinking that the environment is important. He is reading a book on creativity. As he had mentioned in previous Meetings, there were four major things disrupting his environment. He had to deal with a fire alarm that kept going off, and an intercom three times a day. He thought it was a form of creativity being aware of the outer and the inner, being aware of feeling irritated by things around him. How did people live in Afghanistan? It is difficult enough in King's Cross. He couldn't be born into that sort of stress. Last month had been creative for him because he had resolved three of the four outer irritations (leaving only the fire alarm to be dealt with), and grappled with them and felt calmer for doing so.

L had tried the exercise set last month, and had found it very hard to remember to use a different hand to open the front door. He had remembered to do so on entering the building for this Meeting. The difficulty with this exercise demonstrates to him that his belief in his free will is an illusion. The balance exercise was useful too.

BS, in his message from India, talked of [Removed at the request of BS.] ( According to Sikh scriptures, one moment is equal to 24 seconds).

M said he has had experiences of odd absences of memory. All he knows is that he is not conscious. He has had lapses in memory. There is an inner change on a certain level that he has noticed. He is resolving his own personal problems to do with will. Will is an aspect of consciousness.

There being no further contribution, the remaining time until 9:45 was devoted to responses.

D began with a question for M as an older person. We are doing this Work. How useful is it? How does it help? M responded that the Work had changed his consideration of things. He has been asking himself “What is your will?” A whole new panorama had opened up. “What is your will? What are you actually doing?” He was looking at it from a different point of view. Will is a proof, if your will is in action. The only thing that counts is what you've done. The will has to be active. The idea is an important part, you can have wonderful ideas but you have to have the power and the will to make the ideas happen. The will is the Go button. D said that what M was saying was a revelation. Losing memory is not always negative. M said that if you lose a part of memory, you are a spectator, and you are trying to get the memory to work. L said that if we are not in the present, we are experiencing long periods of forgetfulness. D said that he can't remember what he did the day before. Most of the time he is doing and thinking about something, but it is not important. He feels more aware now. He feels he is being productive.

Responding to D’s comment that he could not have been born into the stress of Afghanistan, RM recalled asking a Buddhist monk in an ashram how he would have coped had he been born into a busy environment. The monk replied that he would not have been born into such an context.

RM questioned what it is we are producing. He found his perspectives changed as he became more conscious, he observed but did not judge. He felt an ongoing momentum, but was not sure about productivity. He’s failed at this, he’s failed at that. He recalled the allegory of the sandcastle. The sea comes in and washes it away. What does the builder have left? It is the builder who is built, not the sandcastle. He referred to a concept which he had encountered in the Freemasons, which he described as “building the temple of you”. It's not what you do, it's the way that you do it.

L gave a geometric description of two different world views. The Occidental is straight line thinking, a goal-directed, purposeful view of history. The Eastern is more circular, there is repetition, reincarnation, karma, what goes around comes around. He quoted the Zen Master, Hsin Hsin Ming, Before Enlightenment, Chop wood carry water. After Enlightenment, Chop wood carry water.

“R” said that Chapter 10 of The Fourth Way, by Ouspensky, was relevant here. It maintains that we cannot do, and don't do, anything. D referred to the book by Camus on this theme, A Happy Death.

At 9:45 the Meeting resumed its reading from Beelzebub’s Tales.

"It is necessary to premise just here that at the period of my first descent in person on to this planet, the organ Kundabuffer was no longer in the three-brained beings who interest you.

“And it was only in some of the three-brained beings there that … one of the consequences of the properties of this organ … had enabled them very easily and without any 'remorse-of-conscience' not to carry out voluntarily any duties taken upon themselves or given them by a superior. But every duty they fulfilled was fulfilled only from the fear and apprehension of 'threats' and 'menaces' from outside.

The Meeting again discussed what the term kundabuffer meant.

RM said that the kundabuffer organ was a protective measure, to safeguard the planet and the life on its surface.

At the close of the Meeting, it was decided that the exercise for the coming month would be to do one thing each day, having decided what it would be at the start of the day.  A point would be scored for each day that this was successfully accomplished.

Wakeful Balance

After an initial silence of one minute at 9am, the proceedings began with accounts from attendees of relevant experiences over the previous month.

L said he had found the exercise useful. He had also been following the list system. It may not be possible to have a single "I", but a list may be a catalyst for coalescence towards something closer to a single "I".

D had brought a copy of The Way of the Sufi, by Idries Shah, from which he quoted: "You must prepare yourself for the transition in which there will be none of the things to which you have accustomed yourself". He had also been reading Arianna Huffington in the Huffington Post, who had written about mindfulness in the context of business.

 
He thought that now may be a time that these practices are becoming more widely used in day to day life including in business and the work place. He wanted to ask M and "R" if they are helpful when getting older. He is using them more now, and is getting through the day.

T had been trying the exercise of standing on one leg. Her body had really enjoyed trying to balance; it had been interesting. She had also tried the exercise from GC. She remembered it as being the back of the head, that was to be the place of awareness. She had done it a few times. It had given her a sense of her own skeleton, which she usually gets from looking at a drawing of a skull. To actually experience it was different and terrifying, on the cusp.

M spoke on being older. He said that time goes faster, that "you haven't got as much time as you think you have". He gets stuck in a train off thought, and wonders where the thoughts come from. It is interesting to notice this.

RM recalled that when he was in a Gurdjieff Group he was given a question, "What is this self?" He has been rewriting the Tao Te Ching in his own words, which constantly refers to the true self and false self. The golden mean is the true self, which happens completely naturally. Even attaining wisdom is a false self activity.

B had done the exercise a few times. Maybe he had felt a tingling, a change in awareness. Sometimes his deeper feelings felt a fiction. Last time he was told to enjoy being in love, to smell the roses, but part of him didn't want to, while the better, higher part wants to commit. He had become angry a few times. His mother had asked what was the point of the writing he was working on, and he had felt that his writing was deserving of respect.

"R" had set for herself the practical task for the summer to look at the appetites, and in order to do that decided on alternate days to desist from eating either cheese, or anything containing sugar. This showing her how cunning "it" is. She is going to go on retreat for two weeks with her group, which will be very interesting as there will be nice things on offer to eat. At home she has moved tempting items out of sight in the fridge. Appetite, so-called, is a habit.

As there were no further contributions, the Meeting moved on to the section where responses are given and discussed.

D commented, in response to T, that standing on one foot is quite effective for getting back into the body. Habitual behaviour causes the mind to switch off - the question is, how to function without habitual behaviour.  Turning to RM, D said everyone disagrees what a Sufi is, and there might be a similar issue in his rewriting of the Tao Te Ching about what the true self is. RM said the everything D had thus far described is not it.

"R", in response to D, quoted advice Gurdjieff received from his father in Meetings With Remarkable Men:

...the fundamental striving of every man should be to create for himself an inner freedom towards life...

and to prepare for himself a happy old age. ... But a man could attain this aim only if, from childhood up to the age of eighteen, he had acquired data for the unwavering fulfilment of the following four commandments:

First	To love one's parents.
Second	To remain chaste.
Third	To be outwardly courteous to all without distinction, whether they be rich or poor, friends or enemies, powerpossessors or slaves, and to whatever religion they may belong, but inwardly to remain free and never to put much trust in anyone or anything.
Fourth	To love work for work's sake and not for its gain.

RM said that as we get older we find jt easier and easier to go to sleep. Time didn't go faster for him, but he finds more ways to go to sleep or do useless activities

Z said it seems that so much she did is habit, which is sleep- forming. RM said that some exercises like the Movements and tapping the head while rubbing the tummy are impossible to fall asleep to.

The Muppets demonstrate an exercise for staying awake

Responding to B, L stated that there will always be resistance from family members to another family member doing art. The main thing is what the artist thinks of what he or she is creating. As the artist does not create anything of material value, other members of the family may take a different view of the activity. L suggested that there is a link between practicing creative art and the Work, and that it may play a part in the development of a core identity. Historically, many of the people attending Gurdjieff’s meetings were artists. D asked if Gurdjieff chose them. “R” said no, but they came. D asked “R” if it was only artists who came. “R” said no, ordinary people came too.

Noel Coward’s “Don’t Put Your Daughter On The Stage”

T said it was interesting to know about self calming, that Gurdjieff referred to it as the evil inner-god. “R” said that self-calming can justify staying sleep. D said that being irritable can help him be more himself. “R” could see how this might sometimes be the case. D was unsure if the Meetings are so helpful nowadays as the world has changed completely; respect for elders is not as important as it once was.

At 9:45 the reading from Beelzebub’s Tales continued.

"And so, my boy:"The contemporary writer of whom I began to speak was just a 'writer' like all the rest there, and nothing particular in himself.

"Once when he had finished some book or other, he began to think what he should write about next, and with this in view, he decided to look for some new 'idea' in the books contained in his what is called 'library,' such as every writer there is bound to have.

B commented that rearranging the same stuff and not creating anything new is a concept he is not sure he understands. RM thought it is like the concept of habit. Z said it is a key issue how to separate self from habit. L mentioned Euterpe, the Muse of music and poetry, whom the ancient Greeks thought brought ideas to the artist. Maybe there is nothing new. He said that we are composed of atoms from interstellar space. When he writes music, the fragment comes from such and such a place. RM recalled L’s work in the field of fractal music, where the repeated application of the same rules produces more and more musical motifs, all related but but at the same time each one unique. L asked where does a tune come from, and in the larger context of the human story, where do the folk melodies come from? As other species produce songs and melody, it could be that some tunes are encoded in our DNA, and in that sense are part of physical reality. Citing an example of the tension between new and old, RM said that the DOS operating system remains essentially the same, at the heart of Microsoft Windows. Apple created their own base system. There is a struggle creating something completely new. This is why we have wars. It is related to Gurdjieff’s concept of the “conscious shock”. RM felt that he has to go to places he has never been before. He had been attending the School of Economic Science for many years, and it has a turnover of 300 attendees every year. Those who stay all have a sense of enquiry. From time to time he starts again at year one, in order to be with fresh minds, as otherwise it gets cultish. “Nothing fresh stays in one place,” he said. L commented that in painting, there is really no such thing as a still life. Everything changes.

The reading continued:

" … they therefore decided almost immediately to 'get rid of' both the writer himself and his 'Gospels' …"Some proposed that they should simply shut him up where many 'rats' and 'lice' breed; others proposed to send him to 'Timbuktu'; and so on and so forth; but in the end they decided to anathematize this writer together with his 'Gospel,' publicly and punctiliously according to all the rules...”

L asked is there were any theories as to who Gurdjieff is referring to. “R” though he was referring to himself. L said he had thought it might be Freud, Jung or Joseph Smith. B said he really wants to see Beelzebub’s Tales as a gospel, he wants to be led.

"…Anything he writes now, they all seize upon and regard as full of indisputable truth … But if you were then to ask what he wrote, it would turn out that most of them, if of course they confessed the truth, has never read a single one of his books.

Z remarked that groups take over the public imagination. “R” commented that people speak in this way of Machiavelli, but who has read his books? L recalled Gurdjieff’s advice from his grandmother, which “R” read out to the Meeting:

Eldest of my grandsons! Listen and always remember my strict injunction to you: In life never do as others do … Either do nothing—just go to school—or do something nobody else does.

Following the Reading, it was decided that the exercise for the month would be to try to remember to open doors with the less usual hand.

Art and Heart

After a silence of one minute from 9 am. to establish the mood, most of the attendees gave an account, for up to two minutes, of relevant experiences from the previous month.

Z wished to comment on two things. Firstly, the technical phrase, "negative emotions". She used it for recognizing them when they were happening in her, and when she recognized them it helped her let go of them. Secondly, she tried the exercise of postponing an action. She chose a wish for some gratification; for a few seconds she was aware of resistance, and the desire to do the action at once.

P sent a message by email that she will not be attending for a while and thanked the Meeting for the times she has attended.

RM said he had used desire to remind self to be present, and found that the more he did this, the more it triggered self remembering. He is also using things he does every day to trigger remembering himself, like brushing his teeth. He is becoming more environmentally aware and this is helping him remember where he has put things down! He is more attentive to doing things. He is experiencing immediate results of being mindful.

B said he was in love! It is wonderful and lovely and all consuming. He has an invigorating desire to work and be awake. He cannot work out how best to maintain romance and love and being present.

D was very aware of M not being at the Meeting. He has been reading David Smail's How to Survive Without Psychotherapy. He writes about a precondition that is set, that doesn't go. D has been aware of this idea and his own experience of precondition. He found this enlightening. He had a question about old age. Does this Work benefit us in old age? "R" wasn't there, but it was a question for her.

L has been having a busy time with art events. He finds it is hard to be in the present with  a lot of activities. He had been on holiday. He has been experimenting with a new system of "to do" lists which acknowledges and uses procrastination as a tool to help the process of getting things done. The system tends to focus you back to what you are supposed to be doing. The author is Mark Forster. It reminds him of a natural process and he gets a sense of waves washing pebbles away. The waves are the continuous small actions that are gradually wearing away at the "stones" of the to-do list.

T said she had been more involved in making art available, which had been taking her away from doing the art. She was remembering herself less, and was more out of control - it was knocking her off balance about being present, and taking her away from doing the Work. She asked how it was possible to be in the present while doing other things in the world with other people.

Time was then given to responses to these contributions, prior to continuing with Beelzebub's Tales at 9:45.

Responding to B, N said that in the first three months the hormone of love overtakes you; it is called oxytocin. Take it and enjoy it. D described this time as a time of feeling consumed. B described it as feeling engulfed. He felt he would drown in it. It was affecting his work. All he wanted to be doing was writing poetry. He will do his work at some point. For him, art and deep anxiety seem linked. Z said that she has a long term partner. She finds it easier to focus on her partner than to work on herself. She comes back to herself regularly from focusing on others.

In response to D, RM said that the true self is eternal.  By creating layers we are imprisoning ourselves. That is the problem. The self is an accumulation of layers. D said that the layers of emotion, ideas, concepts, beliefs we have are preconditioned from childhood. He had thought he would be able to change his negatives to positives through psychotherapy. But they don't change. Preconditioning stays. The idea is to become aware of and accept the negative and the positive.

Following on Z's comments, RM advised to use that desire to remember oneself. To say to oneself, "this is me experiencing it". The observer is the real self. The journey is remembering oneself. GC said that the true self is nothing. L said he finds it helpful having a list system. When he has a desire he puts it on the list first. He is what he does, rather than what he thinks or talks of doing. The list anchors him in reality. When he drops anchor he doesn't go anywhere. He stays still in himself.

The reading from Beelzebub's Tales then continued:

..."NOW let us return to those three-brained beings arising on the planet Earth, who have interested you most of all and whom you have called 'slugs.'

In a humourous, and terrifying, depiction of ceremonial persecution, Gurdjieff writes:

"Provoked by such an incident as your thus insulting them, if everything was rather 'dull' with them at the given moment, owing to the absence of any other similar absurd interest, they would arrange somewhere in a previously chosen place, with previously invited people, all of course dressed in costumes specially designed for such occasions, what is called a 'solemn council.' ...If they should then decide – of course, as always, by a majority of votes – that you are guilty, they would sentence you according to the indications of a code of laws collated on the basis of former similar 'puppet plays' by beings called 'old fossils.' ... The most 'important' beings will decree to all the other beings that in all their appointed establishments, such as what are called 'churches,' 'chapels,' 'synagogues,' 'town-halls,' and so on, special officials on special occasions with appointed ceremonies wish for you in thought something like the following:"That you should lose your horns, or that your hair should turn prematurely grey, or that the food in your stomach should be turned into coffin nails, or that your future wife's tongue should be three times its size, or that whenever you take a bite of your pet pie it should be turned into 'soap,' and so on and so forth in the same strain."

Gurdjieff wittily has Beelzebub make a similar faux pas as had his grandson, by using a different unflattering epithet to describe the inhabitants of Earth.

"Do you now understand to what dangers you exposed yourself when you called these remote three-brained freaks 'slugs'?" Having finished thus, Beelzebub looked with a smile on his favorite.

Before ending the Meeting, it was decided that the exercise would be, when looking at or giving attention to something, to simultaneously be aware of an area at the top of your head (when doing so a slight tingling sensation might be felt there).

Writers Rock

After an initial one minute silence, many of the attendees gave an account, for up to two minutes, linking their recent experiences to the previous Meeting.

L had found the self-observation and restraint exercise a good one, waiting first one minute, then five minutes, and then perhaps to desist. He had also had in mind Gurdjieff's dictum: "Like what it does not like."

RM had been trying to find opportunities to be awake during the day, for example counting steps while walking, or if standing at a bus stop, putting himself slightly off balance.
The result is that he is much more spatially aware. He suffers from anxiety at night, and is becoming more aware of the roots of this anxiety.

D was experiencing a desire for quiet or peace where he lives. There is a roof garden which the gardener has been tending for twenty years - but he drinks. At first D thought the noise was an animal. He has been keeping notes of the incidents. In addition, three times a day he hears the intercom buzzer as care workers visit a woman neighbour. He is thinking of moving. He has not been remembering himself. He wants feedback.

Z had still been working on impatience. She was just recognizing that this allows her to be present and continue more positively, in a different way. She hoped that the exercise of postponing of desires could be continued as she had not tried it yet and wanted to.

T said that the month had been very busy and she had blotted out self-remembering, so nothing came to mind.

"R" had had to prepare for a ten thousand word lecture. She left it till the final week. She felt a temptation to be eating. It was another experience proving that these things don't get easier or go away, but occasionally there is an energy which allows one to be aware of the temptations. An important aspect is physical posture which can get forgotten while working.

BS, in his message from India, ... [Removed at the request of BS.] He wants to test the moral of the Thirsty Crow story: where there's a will, there's a way.

B, in his message, said that although he wouldn't be attending the meeting, he felt that he should contribute something. "It didn't want to", he wrote. "Is there resistance in every action? It seems so. Can't think when that's not the case. There's a rush to get 'something' out usually, followed by a frustration nothing much has been expressed of any work. As I sit here and type, I'm aware I can take longer than the allocated two minutes, to clarify what to say. I've been writing and deleting for over an hour now and worry everything is a lie. ... I see where to go, but walk with my eyes closed. I feel almost nauseous writing this drivel. I think I tried."

GC was interested to hear what people thought about the subconscious mind. The usual analogy is of an iceberg, mostly below the surface. He had been reading about it.

Time was then given to feedback and discussion of the contributions.

Responding to GC, RM said he had been exploring this for some time. We are not aware of the bottom part of the iceberg, which is made up of memories, and is where dreams come from. Gurdjieff talked of objective consciousness, which was about expanding the 10 percent portion of which we are aware to 11, 12 percent. Christ, Buddha, fully realised people, were probably about 90, 95 percent. A simple concept but its application is very hard to do. When we see the causes, and later the roots, the pain and anxiety will dissolve and we can come through to absolute nirvana, from the dark night of the soul.

D said it was the same with history, or should it be herstory. He is like a warrior; very interested in boxing, the struggle within is like an inner war. He has to let go, has to be in the present. There is a battle between the past and the present, trauma and the present. Also, in response to B, he too has difficulty doing what he plans; he puts things off for an hour before indulging himself more.

T said what what D had described is so over the top. D said the irony is that it is sheltered housing. The accounts from D and B reminded T of a painting she's been working on for ages, but had just got the idea to add one more color. Instead of doing so, she had spent five hours writing a poem, which activity had seduced her away from working on the painting. RM said that the classical psychological term for this is displacement activity. P asked if there was any difference between the unconscious and subconscious mind. "R" said that Gurdjieff had used both terms to mean different things. RM asked what things, and "R" suggested he read Fragments. T said that Freud had also used both terms, and in addition used the term preconscious. RM said that the body cannot tell the difference. M expressed the distinction simply, saying that the unconscious mind is not conscious.

"R" said that it is all very well theorizing about concepts, but it is better to talk about what happens to us, thus putting things to the test. People have been talking about failure and there is no such thing as failure, just as there is no such thing as success. Perhaps D could use the disruptions as a reminder. L said the whole situation reminded him of the story in Beelzebub's Tales of Karapat of Tiflis, whose ringing of bells disturbed the whole town and had him roundly cursed by those who were woken.

The reading from Beelzebub's Tales then continued:

...it was possible sometimes to observe very strange manifestations of theirs, that is, from time to time they did something which was never done by three-brained beings on other planets, namely, they would suddenly, without rhyme or reason, begin destroying one another's existence.

Sometimes this destruction of one another's existence proceeded there not in one region alone but in several, and would last not just one 'Dionosk' but many 'Dionosks' and sometimes even for whole 'Ornakras.' (Dionosk signifies 'day'; Ornakra signifies 'month.')

Guernica by Picasso

GC queried the meaning of the terms for days and months. RM said that the battles represent conflict between I's. "R" said that Gurdjieff was brought up in the Eastern Orthodox Christian tradition, which has a concept of unseen warfare. Monks worked on it by repeating prayers inwardly. L likened this to RM's exercise of counting steps. D said he had once meditated on whether his angst would still exist after he died, and in a sublime state he had realised that it would. T and RM quoted Shakespeare in Hamlet, "To sleep, perchance to dream..."

Following the reading, it was decided that the exercise for the coming month would repeat the previous one, but with the addition of counting steps while walking, and standing off balance while waiting for a bus.

Hush and Brush

The Meeting began at 9am with a one minute silence, and then most of the attendees gave an account, for up to two minutes, of experiences since the previous Meeting.

Leonard Cohen meditating, 1995
Photograph: Neal Preston

T had been reflecting about the suggestion from "R" in the previous Meeting that the paint brush of the artist or the pen of the creative writer might be baggage as well as everything else - for her it is essential. She wondered whether her practice in painting was robotic, mechanical behaviour as well. She was unsure if she had remembered the assertion correctly but it had stayed with her. She requested a response later after the individual contributions. She has experienced, when drawing and painting, an awakening of sorts, and the thought that the act of painting was another form of baggage getting in the way of becoming more aware seemed undermining of the creative process as a method of awakening to a higher consciousness. If writing or any of the creative arts were baggage or luggage, then she wondered what was left for becoming more aware, other then meditating 24/7, i.e. doing nothing 24/7. She sited the example of Leonard Cohen who had gone to a Zen monastery for five years but had come back out and was singing again.

Z had been trying the exercise, and observed anxiety three times, but it did not disappear. She had found, however, that she had been able to surrender her impatience upon observing it.

B had experienced quite a good month, with periods when he felt he was more aware, but he could not sustain them, and he wanted some mechanism of waking again.

D had read research which showed that reading the news had a negative effect on readers and he couldn't understand why the newspapers focused on the bad and the disastrous, and why people read them. He knows that he himself is drawn to such stories.

L had observed again a parallel between the sections read in Beelzebub's Tales and events in the previous month. The description of a comet striking Earth was paralleled by the meteor exploding over Russia. The part which describes setting up a colony on Mars was followed by reports of projects to do that, and in fact recruitment had just begun for one of them. And in the Meeting itself, reading of the Law of Falling and the Law of Catching Up, seemed exemplified by the fact that the April reading repeated what had been read in March, but did not get as far, and likewise part of the discussion covered the same ground. Perhaps this was the Law of Falling at work, and we were now engaged in the Law of Catching Up.

[Removed at the request of BS.]

The remaining time until 10:30 was devoted to reactions to the initial comments.

L responded to BW by suggesting he use the smartphone app Mindfulness Bell to jolt him into wakefulness at random intervals.

"R" said, in response to D, that there is a paper called, "Good News", but it is dull - no news is good news, but bad news is always more exciting and interesting than happy news, and stops people in their tracks.

Following on from Z's comments, P said she had also attempted the exercise of sacrificing anxiety on the altar of consciousness, but it had not worked for her as she experienced the anxiety state continuing. She asked what it meant. RM said that the altar of consciousness was being aware of one's own body as the altar, the seat of self-remembering. The body is also the very place where anxiety occurs. Something outside of ourselves grips us with fear. If attention is brought to the body, the seat of consciousness, and attention is brought to self-remembering the body, the very act of self remembering kills off, dissolves anxiety. The mind cannot be aware of the physical body and what is outside of the body at the same time. One negates the other.

D, responding to T, mentioned that David Bowie had also spent a period studying Buddhism.

At 10:30 the Meeting resumed the reading of Beelzebub's Tales, continuing from the point reached the previous month.

The two moons of Earth, fragments cast off from a cosmic collision, were described:

"Of these two fragments, the larger was named 'Loonderperzo' and the smaller 'Anulios'; ... in most recent times the larger fragment has come to be called Moon, but the name of the smaller has been gradually forgotten.

"As for the beings there now, not only have they no name at all for this smaller fragment, but they do not even suspect its existence.

"It is interesting to notice here that the beings of a continent on that planet called 'Atlantis,' which afterwards perished, still knew of this second fragment of their planet and also called it 'Anulios,' but the beings of the last period of the same continent, in whom the results of the consequences of the properties of that organ called 'Kundabuffer' – about which, it now seems, I shall have to explain to you even in great detail – had begun to be crystallized and to become part of their common presences, called it also 'Kimespai,' the meaning of which for them was 'Never-Allowing-One-to-Sleep-in-Peace.'

Z queried about the meaning of Kimespai, and D asked about the kundabuffer, and whether that word was related to the Sanskrit word kundelini. T spoke about the term planetary bodies as a possible metaphor for the human condition and if so the Kimespai, the crystallised Kundabuffer may be referring to the natural consequences of procreation, children who are often a shock to the parents system, for example "never allowing one to sleep in peace" from babies through to adulthood.  RM spoke about the value of kundebuffer, and how Gurdjieff had been keenly aware in his groups that some people, when opening up to the work and passionate about it, had become suicidal. Responding to D, "R" said that the term kundebuffer referred to a component of an energy system. RM said that the Bhagavad Gita and Ouspensky have different languages to describe the same things.

Following the reading, there was a discussion on which exercise to adopt for the coming month. D suggested the double-sided arrow. L pointed out that this had been chosen before for the exercise, and in fact was not from Gurdjieff, but devised independently by Ouspensky. RM suggested a self- remembering exercise from Gurdjieff: to hold back doing the thing wanted at that particular moment - on feeling a desire to do something, to stop and not continue the desire, experiencing what it feels like to resist doing the activity wanted. Time limits were discussed - the possibilities were to stop for one minute, five minutes, or to stop going for a thing altogether.

Repeating the Tome

The Meeting began promptly at 9am with a one minute silence, and then most of those present gave an account, for up to two minutes, of relevant experiences and thoughts since the previous Meeting.

B was glad to have got to the Meeting, having overcome the desire not to come. He has been writing for the last two months. He has a desire to be introverted and to be backward in coming forward. He is trying to be more engaged and open, trying to find what his essence is. This desire has led him inward and backward. He is struggling to do two meditations a day, but, more easily than before, is accomplishing one a day. He is forcing himself to write, without using his own life experiences. It is hard to sit down and do it. Sometimes he hates it. It is strange to talk after a period away, getting back into the groove.

D has been thinking about the last month's meeting. "R" had said something about "self-calming". He did not agree with it being a negative thing; for him it is positive. He did not think it is sleep, and wanted to discuss this later.

BS, in his message from India, referred to Lent, and said that "for all those who like it, desire it, and are committed, all seasons are Lent Seasons. One period of 40 days over, another starts.  Time is indivisible. Life too likewise, till man's and Creator's work is done". He "feels the thrust (upward) of the words 'Hear if you have ears' as strongly as when he reads the word 'Hark!' in a Shakespeare play. When he reads the words 'Who stirs?' in King Lear, he instantly recalls what the word 'STOP' intends according to [Gurdjieff]. And he actually stops for two or three breaths. ... all esoteric wisdom leads to the same goal."

"R" had been baby-sitting grandchildren. One of them has a type of autism, Asperger's syndrome. She had been absorbed in her own requirements and lost her temper. It showed that her self image is just a dream about who and what she is, of someone who doesn't lose her temper. Something happened to show that this is not so. She was disgusted with herself. So it was back to square one, as usual.

L had been trying the exercise of "sacrificing anxiety on the altar of consciousness". This was another interesting and subtle exercise. He had checked out its origin, which is partly from a Hindu guru.

T had taken two weeks before remembering the exercise, and then forgot it again after a couple of minutes. She had remembered it a few times since then, and tried to stay with it. She was surprised at discovering she experienced a low level of anxiety most of the time, including during a mundane task of cutting up vegetables, she had an experience of being aware of cutting the vegetables at the same time as being aware of the anxiety. The observing exercise gave a sense of detaching from the anxiety which then seemed to reduce it. Responding to BS, his interpretation of the word "hark" in King Lear felt poignant. It seemed that Lent was his exercise. His comment about when 'Lent' finishes, the next 'Lent' begins reminded her of the creative need of starting to write the next book immediately after finishing one.

Calvin and Hobbes
by Bill Waterson

GC had seen a TV programme about the mind, on which a psychologist had said it is better to see a mental image of a tiger in imagination, than NOT to see a tiger in the real. Because of our need for physical survival, ten percent of the mind is occupied with fear all the time.

The Meeting then turned to responding to the contributions

Following up L's comments about the month's exercise, D asked about the results. L replied that he had experienced that the act of observing the anxiety led to its dissipation. It is like being in the anxiety, like being aware of the rain and putting up the umbrella.  D had experienced the busy-ness of the director of his play after emailing it to him. He said that if you want to get something done, go to someone who is busy. L said that most people like to go to busy cafes, as it suggests the food is good. D disagreed, preferring quieter cafes because he doesn't like crowds.

Responding to D's question about Gurdjieff's concept of self-calming, "R" described it as sending people back to sleep, where they are not open to the anxiety. Her teacher had told her: "we are looking for something to be righteously indignant about". D said that worse than anxiety or anger is boredom. People are frightened of emotional feelings, things they don't want to deal with. Avoidance is sleep too. L said he was reminded of a quote from Herman Hesse, "but secretly we thirst ... for blood, barbarity and night", people are thirsty for danger.

In response to GC's remark about the tiger, to do with anxiety, L was reminded of the maxim of chess grandmaster Aaron Nimzovich, "the threat is stronger than the execution". M said that when you worry you can't make a decision, you're putting off the decision. The decision clarifies the situation. Then the worry changes to a worry about the wrong decision. D opined, rather than do nothing, do something. He said that asthma is a form of suppressed crying. After his friend's funeral, he said to his friend's brother "I'm all cried out". Though D suffers from asthma, he then came off his steroid inhalers and hadn't used them since. Now he is writing; it is like pulling teeth.
He feels lost or closed when not writing. He can only write when the mood takes him. T suggested to D that he sat down at 9am and wrote how he was feeling at the desk. D replied that he has done that and it didn't help. "R" asked if he attended to his physical posture at the keyboard, and if he felt more alive when he is writing, more self-present. D said he has to concentrate more, as other things come in and distract. B said that when he is writing by hand, he is more lost in the middle of the writing than in real life. L mentioned the practice of Hemingway to leave a sentence unfinished at the end of a session so that he had something to go back to the next day. He also mentioned Somerset Maugham, who stated that inspiration struck him "every morning at 9 o'clock sharp".

At the 9:45 alarm, the Meeting resumed reading from Beelzebub's Tales, beginning with reprising Chapter IX, The Cause of the Genesis of the Moon. As there was much discussion, movement was slow, and in fact did not get as far as the previous month, and no attendee appeared to notice the material (and much of the discussion) was being repeated.

After the reading "R" recommended the forthcoming talk by Peter Brook (director of the movie Meetings with Remarkable Men) at the Gurdjieff Society.

It was decided to repeat the exercise of the previous month, sacrificing anxiety on the altar of consciousness.

Angst and Acquiessence

The Meeting began at 9am with a silence of one minute, and those present who wished then gave an account, for up to two minutes, of relevant experiences and thoughts since the previous Meeting.

P had found the liquid exercise useful, and was remembering herself more.

L had been in discussion with a group of people in a coffee shop, and it transpired that one of them, though not a vegetarian, took special care to protect worms. L had made the remark "We are the worms". Later, reading the current section of Beelzebub's Tales provided a context, as one of the chapters is headed: "The impudent brat Hassein, Beelzebub’s grandson, dares to call men 'slugs'". Gurdjieff had used slugs as a metaphor for human qualities - they are slow and struggle against resistance, but have fine, receptive antennae. He had also recently read references to the triune brain in Kim Stanley Robinson's recent novel 2312, a concept introduced by Paul MacClean, which bears similarities to Gurdjieff's psychological model of "three-brained beings" formulated some years earlier.

RM had not been doing as well with the liquid exercise, but the counting was continuing to help, and he was  remembering where he put things.

D thinks he is being calm, but is getting very frustrated, as musicians for the concert he is organising in memory of his friend have not replied to his messages. He is trying to act calmly, to be indifferent as well as impatient. He thinks he is asleep, and feels as if he is walking in water.

The messages from BS were read out. [Removed at the request of BS.] ... He was reminded of this on the day of writing, the day of remembrance of Lord John Pentland. [Removed at the request of BS.]
 
T had been doing the exercise and experienced the liquid "going down the pipe". This feeling was utterly intimate at the same time as utterly mechanical - liquid flowing down a pipe - our body-machine for processing food.

The meeting then turned to responses to the contributions.

T said that D's experience was like the presence of several selves within a person. It was hard for her to get things together to do the act of painting, and it is several times more difficult to organize a group of people to make an event happen.

Sisyphus by Titian, 1549

D said that when his friend died, he wrote ten pages in a spurt of energy, which then reduced. He had felt like Sisyphus in the essay by Albert Camus, endlessly pushing the boulder up the mountain. Z has been feeling ups and downs of energy. The previous few weeks she has been working on patience. She had "lost it" when defrosting the freezer. Observing when this happens, she is using it as a trigger to awake to being present. D thought that in order to change, a person needs more energy. Z regarded it more like a letting go, and RM agreed. D asserted that energy is needed to do something different.

RM quoted the parable of needing a thorn to remove a thorn, and then throwing the last thorn away. He said he needs an anchor as other boats float by. T said that for her the anchor is her paintbrush, and wondered if for D it was the pen. "R" thought these sound like baggage. Z said this was not the Gurdjieff way. Gurdjieff was not looking for peace but for irritation. RM said the aim was looking for "the one identity".

D described Mark Allen playing snooker in Beijing as being unbeatable, and asked if he is in a state of peace when "in the zone".

L asked RM, referring to the recent meteor explosion over Russia, asking what people feel when they see a meteor heading their way. RM replied they can be in the moment, feel calm and peace. When people think they are going to die, they describe incredible peace. Z preferred the word "centred", nominally. L asked where Gurdjieff's concept of conscious shock comes into "peace". "R" stated that conscious shocks come between plateaus. RM repeated the metaphor of needing a thorn to remove a thorn, stating that this group is another thorn, and at some point he would need a boot to go somewhere else. "R" said that Gurdjieff saw self-calming as evil, and that we are chemical factories to transform courser substances. He was in a dynamic state of being, not a static one.

D asked "When are we deluded and when are we not deluded?" T referred again to the difficulties and resistance to doing creative work and how she had been impressed by a speech on creativity given by John Cleese, which refers to 'open' and 'closed states' of mind, both of which are required for original creative thinking to occur and motivate action.

At 9:45 the reading from Beelzebub's Tales continued. Beelzebub, speaking to his grandson, says:

... If you wish I will tell you first of all about the events of general cosmic character connected with this planet, which were the cause of the said troubles of our ENDLESSNESS.

D asked what "endlessness" means. L inferred from the book's description of Beelzebub's age and life that we live on different time scales from them. "R" agreed and said that a later chapter discusses this and refers to time as "the merciless hero pass". "R" explained that Gurdjieff is giving a view which is not subjective, but objective, looking at the earth and men as if from space. Time is connected with the planet's orbits. Even the life and death of the Milky Way is just a flicker. Z thought endlessness might refer to the part of us which is endless. M reframed this as the part of us which can be elevated to a higher consciousness. RM said that all of us is endless. Z said it helps her to consider that part of us is endless, and doesn't see anything as separate.

D said he feels that he can't die. But he can. He felt that even if he died his angst would not go away. L suggested that angst might be written into our DNA, and talked of the Kabbalistic concept of Ein Soph, meaning literally "no end". With regard to art as a response to death which may give meaning to life, L mentioned the poet Gottfried Benn, who had worked as a pathologist.

The reading continued.

... suddenly, on one of the very busiest days, the whole planet Mars was shaken ... Only after a considerable time had passed ... did we recover and gradually make out what had happened.

We understood that the cause of this terrible phenomenon was just that same planet Earth which from time to time approached very near to our planet Mars and which therefore we had possibilities of observing clearly, sometimes even without a 'Teskooano.'

L enquired what a Teskooano was. "R" said it was an invented word, a kind of telescope, much used in what follows.

... the path of the said comet had to cross the line on which the path of that planet Earth also lay; but as a result of the erroneous calculations ... the planet Earth and the comet 'Kondoor' collided...

L commented that even endlessness is subject to chance events and therefore not all-powerful. It was also interesting that comets and meteors were so prevalent in the news in the previous few days.

...this Most High Commission ... resolved that ... planet Earth, should constantly send to its detached fragments, for their maintenance, the sacred vibrations 'askokin.'

"This sacred substance can be formed on planets only when both fundamental cosmic laws operating in them, the sacred 'Heptaparaparshinokh,' and the sacred 'Triamazikamno,' ...

"R" explained these terms referred to the Law of Seven and the Law of Three.

T stessed that the book is fiction. In fact all books and everything written by human beings is fiction, and the truth is that nobody knows anything. "R" said that the book touches something. D asked if "R" believes the book. "R" quoted Gurdjieff's advice not to believe anything unless you can verify it - the book is allegorical. D asked why do so many highly intelligent people believe in religions. L thought peer pressure was a factor. Z was reminded of the metaphor from the Tao Te Ching about the drop of water being indistinguishable from the ocean, if ego can be overcome.

...But afterwards, just in the period when they also, as it proceeds on other similar planets of our great Universe, were beginning gradually to be spiritualized by what is called 'being instinct,' just then, unfortunately for them, there befell a misfortune which was unforeseen from Above and most grievous for them.

Returning to the earlier point, L said that his view of the work was of engaging in struggle, whereas RM's view was of acquiescence. RM said that struggle is about letting go. L said that is possible unless there is an unforseen problem as in the last line of the chapter.

To close the Meeting, there was a discussion to choose the exercise for the coming month. RM suggested it should be to "sacrifice whatever is giving you anxiety on the altar of consciousness." He elaborated that the altar is a representation of consciousness in churches, a symbol. The objective is to be present to whatever is inducing anxiety. and to be aware of the anxiety and hold onto it as the trigger for being present".

On Death and Distraction

The Meeting began at 9am with a silence of one minute, and those present who wished then gave an account, for up to two minutes, of relevant experiences and thoughts since the previous Meeting.

D had suffered the loss of a close friend. He had been surprised by how much he had cried, and wondered whether he had been crying for himself or his friend. He thought this release of emotion very important for men. He had held his friend's hand in hospital, willing him to live. At the funeral, mourners could write a note. D had written: "Up United from an Arsenal supporter ". That was love, he said. In his grief, a poem had come to him which he wrote down.

Z had not managed the exercise at all, but had been giving attention more to what was eating her and where her consciousness was going, and had found that more useful. She had found it really helpful at the last Meeting, when we were reading and paused so that different people could express their thoughts on the text.

T had found the transitory nature of the exercise (lasting for the just the brief instant the liquid strikes the tongue), a reminder and symbol of the transitory nature of life, how one second we are alive and the next second, we are dead.

RM likewise had found the exercise difficult; he had been counting steps while walking, or at home, and over time feels he is becoming more present.

L spoke of a friend who had been considering coming to the previous month's Meeting. He found out a few days later that she had died on the morning of the Meeting. This was somebody quite well and vibrant, a fellow artist. This reinforced in him the importance of fulfilling one's creative aspirations in the present, as she had been doing, rather than waiting till some future time - this had been a topic of discussion last time.

GC had found it impossible to do the exercise. He had remembered it before and after the moment of drinking. Although he had suggested the exercise, it had come to him "out of the blue".

P had found the exercise very difficult, although she would sometimes have it in mind before drinking her coffee. She was intending to continue with this difficult exercise.

[Removed at the request of BS.]

S said she was new to the meeting, but had originally read "In Search of the Miraculous" in Japanese, a long time ago. Recently she had come across this book again, and resumed the practice of self-remembering, which she had been finding very difficult. Since resuming this practice, she had been having vivid dreams. She had been considering the distinction between thought and emotion.

The meeting then turned to responses to the contributions.

Since his bereavement, D has been doing more creative work. Before he was lackadaisical about it, now he feels it is spiritually important. L's music comes to mind. It is an issue becoming relevant to mental health. Writing is a form of self-awareness. It is important to have a balance between being and doing. One cannot deny one's emotional content. He felt freed by all the crying. His friend had died because he could not express his emotions. He had suffered from high blood pressure. Developers sacrifice their lives for their designs.

RM has found it extraordinary how we are becoming more aware of the human condition. We are aware of how difficult it is. The first thing is to know that you are in a prison. We need a shock to get us to want to wake up. Without the shock it will not happen. You have to hit a really hard place. He can remember himself when drinking. At a Gurdjieff school he once attended, they kept changing the exercise to keep it unexpected.

GC asked, "What is the human condition?"

By Antoine de Saint-Exupéry,
 from "The Little Prince".

M replied that it was a state of sleep.

GC said it was knowledge of mortality, our three score years and ten.

L said it was also about loneliness and solitude. As far as we know we are alone in the universe. Even after we colonise the planets, the stars will be too far away to visit.

At 9:45 the reading from Beelzebub's Tales continued.


AFTER the captain had gone, Beelzebub glanced at his grandson and, noticing his unusual state, asked him solicitously and with some anxiety:

"What is the matter, my dear boy? What are you thinking so deeply about?"

Looking up at his Grandfather with eyes full of sorrow, Hassein said thoughtfully:

"I don't know what is the matter with me, my dear Grandfather, but your talk with the captain of the ship has brought me to some exceedingly melancholy thoughts... 

Only now have I come very clearly to understand that everything we have at the present time and everything we use – in a word, all the contemporary amenities and everything necessary for our comfort and welfare – have not always existed and did not make their appearance so easily.

"It seems that certain beings in the past have during very long periods labored and suffered very much for this, and endured a great deal which perhaps they even need not have endured."

L could relate to this in terms of the history of music, which is taken for granted. Our world is full of objects created by other human beings.

Hassein continues:

"...And so, my dear and kind Grandfather, now that owing to your conversation with the captain, I have gradually, with all my presence, become aware of all this, there has arisen in me, side by side with this, the need to make clear to my Reason why I personally have all the comforts which I now use, and what obligations I am under for them."

L commented that he was beginning to see a possible symbolic meaning in the roles of the main characters. Does the Captain symbolise reason, and Beelzebub wisdom? This might be an additional set of metaphors to add to the description of the spaceship's propulsion system which is reminiscent of Freud's allusion to thermodynamics in his psychodynamic model of the human mind. The Captain keeps coming and getting called away, which may symbolise the difficulty of maintaining attention.

RM said the captain may symbolise action. The child symbolises discovery. and sadness about taking everything in the world for granted; and also experiences guilt and awe of existence - everything seems magical or miraculous to him. We are attempting to wake up. D queried if it was necessary to bring in guilt, which we tend to project onto us.

Following the reading, it was decided to repeat the exercise of the previous month, but to extend the period until the drink has been finished.