DM had read or heard on the radio that the subconscious only operates in the present. He wondered about flashbacks and memory, and how that related to the subconscious. He had been studying Osho's thinking. Osho had done Buddha-like stuff. He would go into a state of boredom, and that is a good state to be in, a transition state between doing and being.
L had been doing one-minute meditation with the Insight Timer app, and had also come across the Vipassana system, and a number of videos about it on YouTube by S. N. Goenka.
He found it increased a sense of identity, and objective awareness. He had liked the non-sectarian approach. He had also tried to enter a meditative state of mind while walking, while being fully aware of the body physically. It felt like watching "it" (or id) walk. Perhaps a case of ego versus id.
E said that, regarding the exercise, he had not done it too much. He had just started a new job, and gone into something completely different, and was stressed by this.
N had been trying to become more conscious of his feet when things were stressful. He spoke of the machinery in his system, and not identifying with the gears, and this had helped him pull back from particular emotional currents.
"R" said had been with two of her grand children. One was in distress and she consoled him with touch. There was more meaning to sense. The touch was more important than words, and children understand this. You can't wipe out what is distressing the child.
GC had been trying to stay with states of unease. He also recalled an experience when he visited an ashram years ago. A young person whom he assumed was in charge told him he couldn't sit down when the bell went and that it was a ceremony. Later he asked one of the teachers about the rule not to sit down and he asked him who told him that. When GC explained the teacher asked him why he had listened to the child?
T said that she had found it very hard to be aware of the exercise and link it up with the Work. When her emotions were running high the drama blotted everything else out. She recalled the exercise only in hindsight of the emotional state.
The attendees then turned to responding to the contributions.
T had found N's comments about gears relevant, as gears and machinery were consistent with the current part of the reading. His description of gears and machinery helped her to think about her own machinations.
E had also found N's description of gears and cogs helpful. L said he had found it interesting too, as it linked with the way Freud had likewise used thermodynamics and hydrodynamics in his day to conceptualise psychodynamics, whereas the metaphor of choice was now computers, as in the artificial intelligence field, which posits the questions Can machines be aware? alongside Can we be aware? There are scientists trying to emulate the human brain in the belief it is possible to upload a mind into a computer. GC said to L that he seemed to prefer Freud over Jung. L said that he found Freud's approach more scientific, and he had found Jung's judgement more woolly, in that one of his friends was the extremist Miguel Serrano, who was also a friend of Hermann Hesse, and wrote a book about them. N made the point that a person's choice of friends does not necessarily impact on the quality of their thinking in other areas. GC raised questions about Gurdjieff's behaviour during his lifetime, and "R" recommended a book by Tcheslaw Tchekhovitch, Gurdjieff: A Master in Life.
RM commented on N's description of gears and machinery. He said he himself had been an engineer. From this experience he learned that the whole thing doesn't work if one bit doesn't work. He was aware during the exercise that he had a need to evaluate which seemed a huge barrier. When the evaluating stopped he was aware that he was seeing what was happening. He was aware of an attachment created by evaluating. When he was not evaluating he was not attaching.
At 9:45 the reading from Beelzebub's Tales resumed, continuing with Chapter 18, The Arch-Preposterous.
The part of Gornahoor Harharkh's new invention which he himself called the Hrhaharht/aha and regarded as the most important was in appearance very much like the 'Tirzikiano' or, as your favorites would say, a 'huge electric lamp.' ...
The walls of this original construction were made of a certain transparent material ... the chief particularity of this said transparent material was that, although by means of the organ of sight beings could perceive through it the visibility of every kind of cosmic concentration, yet no rays of any kind, whatever the causes they may have arisen from, could pass through it, either from within out or from without in.
T said she found the depiction of this dignitary as a small bird, a raven, very funny. L said that this was likely to be a considered choice by Gurdjieff, as ravens are in fact particularly intelligent birds.
E asked for an explanation of the section just read. L said it was to be taken as a small part of a description of Gurdjieff's structure of the mind, being an electrical metaphor. It relates to the particular chapter of Beelzebub's Tales that the Meetings were currently reading, as Gurdjieff, several decades after Freud, in his turn uses a model which also draws upon electronics. L thought the description of the transparent material which allowed sight without any other influences alluded to thinking freely with no distractions.
There was ... a 'Soloohnorahoona' of special construction, or ... a 'pump-of-complex-construction-forexhausting- atmosphere-to-the-point-of-absolute-vacuum.'
... Gornahoor Harharkh himself approached the said pump ... and with his left wing moved one of its parts, owing to which a certain mechanism began to work in the pump. He then approached us again and, pointing with the same special feather of his right wing to the largest Lifechakan, or Krhrrhihirhi, or dynamo, further continued his explanations.
He said, 'By means of this special appliance, there are first "sucked-in" ... all the three independent parts of the Omnipresent-Active-Element- Okidanokh present in it, and only afterwards when in a certain way these separate independent parts are artificially reblended in the Krhrrhihirhi into a single whole, does the Okidanokh, now in its usual state, flow and is it concentrated there, in that "container"'—saying which, he again with the same special feather pointed to something very much like what is called a 'generator.'
'And then from there,' he said, 'Okidanokh flows here into another Krhrrhihirhi or dynamo where it undergoes the process of Djartklom, and each of its separate parts is concentrated there in those other containers' ...
E queried the allusion to a vacuum. L thought it was connected to the clearing of thoughts from the mind, whereas for T the reference to a pump brought the thought of a beating heart. T said that each of us is a pump.
... he pulled another lever and again continued:
... 'But since, intentionally by an "able-Reason"—in the present case myself—the participation of that third part of Okidanokh existing under the name of "Parijrahatnatioose" is artificially excluded from the said process, then this process proceeds there just now between only two of its parts, namely, between those two independent parts which science names "Anodnatious" and "Cathodnatious." And in consequence, instead of the obligatory law-conformable results of the said process, that non-law-conformable result is now actualized which exists under the denomination of "theresult- of-the-process-of-the-reciprocal-destructionof- two-opposite-forces," or as ordinary beings express it, "the-cause-of-artificial-light."
"R" said that in this vacuum there are only two forces acting. She also raised the question as to how ravens could have built this machinery as they do not have hands. T suggested that they might have built it in their imaginations.
The lack of a third force, or resolution, reminded GC of a woman who would eat a doughnut every day, and for the sake of her health, agreed to place an apple each time beside the doughnut to help her wean herself away from the excess sugar. She continued, however, to choose the doughnut each day. He said it is very important to succeed, as it props you up mentally. RM said that if you are playing a game and trying to win, then you have got a problem. GC disagreed with this.
Following the reading, there was some discussion about what exercise to adopt during the coming month. It was decided (based on GC's anecdote) that it should be to think of something done daily that is tempting but not good, be aware each time of a better alternative, and attempt to take the better action (observing which action is in fact taken).
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