The Spirit Free'd

Hanging on ere winter comes.
(photo by L)

L said that he had done the first exercise throughout the month, keeping a journal of synchronicities. He read out several, there were so many that there was insufficient time to list many. In the park following the previous Meeting, which spoke much of a raven, passers by rescued a similar bird, an injured crow, which was being attacked by its fellows. That evening he was approached in a restaurant by a man who said he remembered him from the Royal Society hundreds of years ago. Later in the month he heard a newsreader on the radio with exactly the same name. One cold evening he had taken a photograph of a bee clinging to the petal of a solitary flower. He was subsequently "followed" on Twitter by someone with a near identical picture used as her avatar. The date of M's funeral itself was a synchronicity, delayed unpredictably to the date of the monthly Gurdjieff Meeting of which he was a founder member and regular attendee from inception until last year. M's funeral synchronistically occurred shortly after the Meeting time always ends.

D recounted how he had first met M at the U3A and been drawn to him, and eventually learned of the Gurdjieff Meetings. D had also been doing meditations with the Insight Timer app. He had been using the mantra om mani padme hum, and had found music for it online which was absolutely beautiful, but since then his app had crashed and he had been unable to use it. He did not know whether that was a synchronicity. There was so much going on, he had so much to say, but he felt he couldn't say anything. He was confused. His relationship had not worked out, and now M had passed away.



For T it was two months since her last Meeting. She had had an extraordinary experience of very sudden ill health. She had been reviewing her records from the peak flow chart, which comprised a page for each month. Her period of critical illness, which had prevented her from attending the previous Meeting, had been exactly a month before M's severe stroke and death, each occurring over five days. She wondered if there was some link with what had happened to her exactly a month before, a kind of reverse causality. It felt so connected. "R" said that when you are working on yourself you are more sensitive, it is not necessarily explainable. T spoke about how years before, she had met M when L introduced him to her. M came to live in London from Harare, and the conversation always turned to speaking passionately and consistently about the ideas of Gurdjieff. Setting up the North London Gurdjieff Meetings came about to enable a focus and outlet for M's intense interest in the philosophical works of Gurdjieff, Nicoll and Ouspensky.

L said that on the day of M's death, while at the hospital, L had been looking at Meetings with Remarkable Men, following up a reference suggested by "R". He had come across the paragraph describing the Yezidi boy trapped in a chalk circle drawn on the ground, and curious about this phenomenon, searched Google on Yezidi and circle. The first word in the first article which came up started with the word "synchronicity", which seemed connected with the exercise for the month, to keep a record of synchronicities - it was in fact a meta-synchroniticity - a synchronicity about synchronicity. He mentioned Paulo Coelho's view that they are, in the form of omens, the common language of the world, which is a theme in his novel, The Alchemist.

The Terreskane Hotel

RM spoke about his experience with M and how that it has been relevant to the Work. He arrived in Rhodesia about the same time as M, in the seventies. RM was staying in a small rented room, and went to a nearby hotel for evening meals. One evening M walked past and asked if he could join him. M started talking and was excited to discover that RM too was interested in mystical stuff, and introduced him to a group, the Brotherhood of Mystics. M came with him once and never came again, though RM was inspired by this group, where he met extraordinary people, and he felt that it changed his life. Every so often M would call him to have a chat. When M began to take an interest in Gurdjieff, they looked at the writings together. M's introductions led to RM getting involved in the Gurdjieff Society, meeting a particularly influential person called Maria Sullivan, who ran a Sufi group which taught a particular type of dance and way of meditating, which was highly inspirational. M and RM used to meet up once every two or three months until M started a Gurdjieff discussion group. They met in RM's house once a month. In later years after RM came to London he was introduced to Paul Koralek, of the Gurdjieff Society, which led to him attending twice a week. Every Friday morning, before work, there would be reading from Beelzebubs Tales, which was tiring but deeply inspiring. If not for M, RM would not have got involved in dance, nor had such an intense training. M had been a cornerstone in his life, and had helped him step by step through his influence and spiritual connection. He didn't think M knew how powerful a spiritual connection he had had. He had loved him for that.

Poem by M

T said that when M spoke it felt like he was channelling and that it was as if RM was a living legacy of M's life. The poem that M wrote about the divine nature of music, which was hoped to be read out at the funeral also sounded as if it was M channelling. A relative had changed M's secular funeral arrangements to a religious one. However there were two beautiful quirks of fate. The funeral and the burial were in a cemetery an hour and a half from London but ten minutes from RM's home, and the funeral, originally meant to be on Friday, had been delayed until Sunday at 11:00, which was the first Sunday of the month when the Gurdjieff Meeting happens. This enabled the Meeting to take place near the funeral and near to RM, who usually travels the same long distance into London each month to attend the Meetings.

"R" read out some quotations. From the beginning of Beelzebub's Tales:

Any prayer may be heard by the Higher Powers and a corresponding answer obtained only if it is uttered thrice:

Firstly—for the welfare or the peace of the souls of one’s parents.
Secondly—for the welfare of one’s neighbor.

And only thirdly—for oneself personally.

From the last part of The Third Series:


What they call the "soul" does really exist, but not everybody necessarily has one.

A soul is not born with man and can neither unfold nor take form in him so long as his body is not fully developed.

It is a luxury that can only appear and attain completion in the period of "responsible age," that is to say, in a man's maturity.

The soul, like the physical body, is also matter—only, it consists of "finer" matter.

The matter from which the soul is formed and from which it later nourishes and perfects itself is, in general, elaborated during the processes that take place between the two essential forces upon which the entire Universe is founded.

The matter in which the soul is coated can be produced exclusively by the action of these two forces, which are called "good" and "evil" by ancient science, or "affirmation" and "negation," while contemporary science calls them "attraction" and "repulsion."

In the common presence of a man, these two forces have their source in two of the totalities of general psychic functioning, which have already been mentioned.

One of them coincides with that function whose factors proceed from
the results of impressions received from outside, and the other appears as a function whose factors issue chiefly from the results of the specific functioning of the organs, as determined by heredity. 


and in Meetings with Remarkable Men, Gurdjieff's father tells him:

In that soul which a man supposedly has, as people believe, and of which they say that it exists independently after death and transmigrates, I do not believe; and yet, in the course of a man’s life “something” does form itself in him: this is for me beyond all doubt.

‘As I explain it to myself, a man is born with a certain property and, thanks to this property, in the course of his life certain of his experiencing elaborate in him a certain substance, and from this substance there is gradually formed in him “something or other” which can acquire a life almost independent of the physical body.

‘When a man dies, this “something” does not disintegrate at the same time as the physical body, but only much later, after its separation from the physical body.

T said that when M was unconscious, before he died, his forehead was completely, utterly, smooth.

The Meeting finished early and all present went to the nearby cemetery to attend the funeral.