Time and Relative Digression

The Meeting began with a minute's silence. Then those who wished spoke for up to two minutes on relevant issues from the previous month.

"R" said that one of her strongest experiences over the Christmas period was when she made and wrote Christmas cards. She experienced resistance because of the hassle, but there was also something satisfying about naming each of the friends she sent to, bringing into mind a sense of being connected, and also a sense of receiving something given in a non-selfish way.The work of looking up addresses - this was nothing to do with the commercial aspect of Christmas. She had been aware of her hands doing the writing, and been aware of her bad posture as she was sitting at her computer.

L had started reading the book RM had mentioned in the last meeting, Stranger in a Strange Land  by Robert Heinlein. It is about a human born on Mars, whose parents die. He is brought up by Martians. Later he is brought back to Earth and the book addresses communication difficulties between different paradigms. It was inspired by The Jungle Book. He had tried the hand exercise. He was still not convinced it came from Gurdjieff, as he had not found any clear attribution. However the exercise did appear to help the development of lucid dreaming.


D wanted to describe an experience he had where the Daemon tried to guide him. Before Christmas he had a bad attack of asthma. He was due to be going away for the New Year. He was using the inhaler too much, and was getting desperate. He remembered that there was a breathing technique created by a Russian about twenty years ago, who had written a book, but he couldn't remember the name of the book or the Russian doctor. He tried to remember the technique and started to feel better enough to go out. He went into a Charity Shop for something. He never get books from Charity Shops, he has got too many books already, but he felt drawn to the books, and did not know why but found himself scouring them from top to bottom. He didn't know what he was looking for. He came across one which he pulled out and, and considered whether to buy it, but then saw a yellow book behind the one he had pulled out. He tugged that one out too and it was the book he had been trying to remember. "Freedom from Asthma" by Dr Alexander Buteyko. He felt that something else was at work to help him. He bought the book, and although the virus came back and he got really ill again, he followed the breathing techniques and recovered well, and was able to go away.

GC had been absent the previous time, but described how for two days, for medicinal purposes, he had been eating a third of a nutmeg three times day. He realised he wasn’t in a bad mood, and eventually connected this observation with the mind-altering properties of nutmeg.

T said she had been aware of her hands while washing up, but also had had an experience in the studio while she was taking a half-hour break. She had started doing a timetable, which alternated a half-hour working with a half-hour resting. It was an experiment. It meant that the time wasn’t as chaotic as usual. Going back to the hands, she had about ten minutes where she paid them complete and utter attention. Her mind became very aware of the specific microcosm of the hands and her in the studio, and then the macrocosm of the universe, which sounded grand, but it was a very powerful experience of being connected to the whole. After emerging from that experience, she wrote down what she remembered of it, and had intended to read it to the Meeting.

Responding to D, L had been reminded of day when, as a student, he was looking at a stack of bookshelves in a bookshop, and asked his hands to pick out a significant book, without him looking. The book picked out was The Glass Bead Game, by Hermann Hesse, which became a very important book to him. D spoke further about the Buteyko method for treating asthma. GC asked D why he was so worried about not existing. D replied that he did not want to die in ignorance. G said that the most important thing is to be conscious of the moment of death, and that non-existence was infinite. L thought that scienctific research might greatly extend the human lifespans in the future. However there would be the same existential issues facing humans as individuals and as a species. G asked what our purpose was in being here. "R" mentioned the Five Strivings

The message from BS was read out, and it was noted that he wished his contributions from the previous two years to be removed from the blog. It was agreed that this be done, where it did not take away too much of the sense of the blog entry. It was unclear whether the request was meant to apply also to the current and future entries, and whether time should be given in the Meetings to messages and ensuing discussion of them which would not be recorded in the blog. As two minutes was often insufficient to read the messages, thus depriving the Meeting of part of the content, it was thought one solution would be for BS to place messages in their entirety as comments to the blog entry. These would be easier to remove at a future time if this was desired. It was also agreed that in future, requests for removal of comments should be made within four weeks of publication.

The Meeting then resumed the reading of Beelzebub’s Tales.

… the average proper normal duration of their existence began gradually to diminish and that it has now already become in the objective sense almost 'nothing.'


L thought that Gurdjieff’s frequent assertion that different groups experience time at different speeds suggested that he might have come across Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity. GC thought this unlikely. L mentioned the title of the chapter, The Relative Understanding of Time, which he thought might be an indication.

To conclude the Meeting, there was some discussion of what exercise to adopt for the coming month. At this point GC commented that the book on lucid dreaming is clearly written and understandable, and wanted to know why Gurdjieff made his book so difficult to read and understand. "R" said that development only comes through making an effort. GC responded that lots of people don't read this book because it is difficult. Each person at the Meeting has a different view of it, and keeps repeating their own interpretation of it. "R" said that Gurdjieff worked closely with Orage on the English, and that Gurdjieff believed people were ruined by their conditioning. GC spoke of encounter groups moaning about the same thing every week. It was decided the exercise would be to observe and be aware of cases of repetition in what happens and what is experienced.