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.