Be More Dog

D had been reading Meetings With Remarkable People by Osho, who rated Gurdjieff very highly, but seemed to admire most of all Bodhidharma. In the book, Osho also talks about the language of All and Everything, which he described as incomprehensible, and wrote a paragraph detailing his interpretation. D thought it would be useful for this to be read out in the Meeting before attention is focused on Beelzebub's Tales.

L had continued noting synchronicities, and odd things had continued to happen. He had wondered if M had been speaking through people. On one occasion, a Caribbean man had joined him on the top deck of a bus and insisted L repeated several things he said, which included among other things strong encouragement to go to the Bar Linda cafe in Golders Green. L duly did that a few days later, and somebody L had met once several months before joined the table and there was a good conversation. On another occasion, with friends over Christmas, somebody almost in a state of sleep kept repeating in uncharacteristic fashion that it would be good to go away on holiday. L said he was working on a piece of music to depict the process of transition or dying.

Image from BBC production,
"Snow Wolf Family and Me".

RM had been continuing the attentive meditations in which you remember yourself intensely for one minute, though he had been doing four minute sessions so that he could have four goes at it. He has also been working with the Tao Te Ching because he had rewritten the book last year, and he goes through his notes after he meditates. After meditating he seems much closer to his intuitive centre, which might be called C influence, and the message he seems to have been getting is that we are born in this world, with the only duty we have being to learn how to play, and that our duty is to learn what our craft is and to play with it. After he had that intuition. he watched a programme about wolves on the ice, and how the wolf pups love to play, and there is nothing more delightful than seeing young animals playing.

T said that reflecting back over the last few months, it had been a bit of a maelstrom and it had been very difficult to have a sense of linear time, and all her routines had been disturbed, including work, and she had realised that her memory was often associated with routine and knowing where she is in time and place and person, and when that changed, it really affected her sense of memory and whether she can remember things. It had felt a bit earth-shattering, with her critical illness and M's departure.

"R" had found something which worked as a reminder for her, and which did not seem to have associations. One day after her morning preparation, it occurred to her to use something visual as a reminder, and she picked a colour - turquoise blue - which is not common during the day - there are not many things which are that colour and when they are there, for her it stood out, it struck a chord, and that was surprisingly helpful because she had tried every one of the exercises over the years, and they get tired, but this was surprisingly fresh and rewarding, because the moments were free enough to be reminded without distracting associations. The colour turquoise is not found much in nature, but in decorations, window displays, in garments and Christmas cards, and all the things which happen at this time - there were plenty of joyful expressions of the colour that directly touched her solar plexus.

GC had been flirting with his negative states, for the last couple of months. He thought it was just ill discipline on his part, when he felt them coming up, he just allowed them to come and then they went. Usually he was attentive to these encroaching states but he had been a bit undisciplined in this area recently. Sometimes he felt he was not lost in a negative state, but when he did get into this negative state, this 'zone', it was only after the zone disappeared that he had become aware that he had been at one with the total thing and 'lost' in it. He had also allowed himself not to be diverted into awareness. He had described this as weakness, but really it was laziness and he recognised that laziness was in him. For example if he started over-eating, he realised when he took the first thing - what are you doing? - and then just did it. Thankfully, there was still a bit of discipline left, but it had definitely disappeared a little, over the last couple of months. He had been reading on the Gurdjieff web site about synchronicity, and had listened to the lecture there, which had been good. His experience of being in India, whether or not it was a smaller community and they were mentally more in touch with what's going on or had more mental freedom, he had experienced more synchronicities in India and he knew other people who had recognized this increased phenomena too.

Following the contributions, the Meeting turned to responses.

GC said that T had complained about loss of focus before - he knew there were valid reasons for it this time, but it had been a recurrent theme (though not every time) since he had been coming to the Meetings, and he wondered if she were perhaps looking for reasons to be diverted. T said that rang fairly true, about looking for things to be diverted by, from just doing the work. D said he called this "swaying from the path", but the interesting thing about it was that he always came back again, and that was the nature of the progress. The Osho book had greatly helped him, showing different versions of the ways to the path and different people who were on this path. The book was a Christmas present found by a synchronicity, from a friend who had been unable to find it, but then came across it by accident in a sale. He expounded at some length on this tale, how he had considered the likelihood of receiving a pair of slippers, how the price tag of £3.50 had been left on the book, and so on. After some time he reflected that the synchronicities had brought him back to being aware of his path.

L responded to GC, saying that if a person has downcast feelings, it may be a manifestation of their heart - everyone has a heart which can sometimes be sad. Anyone feeling that way might be lighter of spirit if they remember they are not alone on these journeys. In Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist, the main character, the boy Santiago, gets to know his heart. GC recommended listening to the BBC interview with Paulo Coelho on Desert Island Disks, which was quite revealing. L recalled that as a young man he had been put into a mental institution because of his intention to be a writer.

L liked "R" 's choice of a colour as trigger. Turquoise was an interesting choice, because it is one of the colours which does not appear often in nature, so if seen it is probably something man-made. "R" said it might also be a precious stone. "L" said that would often be after it has been dug up and fashioned by a jeweler, so there would be an element of human artifice. "R" said that after the trigger, she experiences an intentional centering, and life continues immediately. Having listened to people so far in the Meeting, L thought that "R" 's use of centering linked to a trigger was a good alternative to doing a brief meditation as RM had suggested, as it attracts no attention in public.

RM observed from everyone's contributions that people were noticing things more, and it is the act of non-judgmental noticing that makes the change happen - that's the transformation. He finds that if he notices the cause after, for example, observing an unquiet mind, the cause starts to eliminate itself, and then the outcome also eliminates once the cause is gone. GC asked that if paying attention and noticing as things happen (we usually notice bad things), mean that there is going to be a moment of choice? RM thought that the choice happens by itself, you notice what's good and what isn't, what you'd prefer. GC thought that there is a moment of choice, where you decide to carry on like that - allow an activity to continue, or reverse from the situation and go down a different road. RM gave an example where he had become aware that he reacted instantly in a negative way to certain things that people said that he didn't like. He found that by noticing that he was reacting in a negative way, the next time it happened (although he still reacted - he had no choice to stop it at that moment because it was still a strong feeling and he was reacting to his feelings), he reacted less violently than before, and eventually the behaviour faded and he no longer did it. GC said that if a feeling has strength that means you are allowing it to have the strength. "R" queried who was doing the allowing. GC could not answer that, but said that there was an allowing going on. You were realising something and allowing the situation you had become aware of to continue. GC said there was noticing, judgement and correction. D thought it was to do with feeling. In the case of over-eating, a person could get used to the hunger, and observe it. Rather than choice as GC had said, D thought in terms of options. Once we are aware we have options, we are freer. RM said his greatest freedom was that he had no option. He had never made a choice in his life to do anything himself. All his actions had been automatic. He was part of nature like a leaf blowing in the wind. L said that this could be overcome by making a list of possible things to do, throwing a dice and acting on the result. So there were techniques for breaking free of that kind of reactive behaviour. RM thought the only technique was to pay attention, to remember yourself, and the mere act of remembering yourself changes your state at that moment, and your state is a part of nature, and as it's a part of nature the state changes because you've paid attention, and so your action changes to be more wholeful, or whatever it is; it's still nature. The only thing you can do is wake up.


D responded to RM's contribution. He too had seen and marveled at the programme about the wolves. The book by Osho also talks about playing, and coming back to being a child. D mentioned he had noticed a wood pigeon staring at him intently through the window from its perch on a tree. T was reminded of the dog Eddie in the sitcom Frasier.


                  Eddie demonstrates a one minute attentive meditation.

D thought that feeling was a stronger driving force than thinking. Most of the self-realised or enlightened people say you should go into your feelings, even with depression, although there it can be dangerous. We escape feeling with distractions like eating. He had experienced that desire to eat recently but was aware of it and resisted it, which he realised later had been an achievement. RM said it seemed to him that thinking and feeling come together. The feeling comes first, then we think about why we feel that way, finding the cause (which may be long ago), is an objective of psychotherapy. Seeing the truth of it can set you free. It was vitally important that we go into the feeling and observe and use the thinking in a positive way. This reminded D of CBT, which deals with thoughts, feelings and situations.



GC recalled the saying that the mind is a good servant but a bad master. and it was too much thinking that was the problem. The brain is an organ and the mind is an extension of that organ. The problem is if the mind uses you. RM agreed that it was a good observation to ask if the mind is using you or if you are using the mind.  DM thought it was our history that drives us. GC thought that in any given situation, usually what the mind is doing is superfluous. As regards feelings, we might even be influenced by experiences of our ancestors, in which case we may be unable to follow up the cause of those feelings. "R" said that the only thing we had was the physical sensation of the body here now, being present. We can be free enough to put our attention on it, sense it, and hold that attention for as long as we can. Memories, explanations and fantasising about what may or not be the cause of something is secondary. GC said that recent experiences were once "now", and are in that sense worth considering also.

Before the Meeting moved on to Beelzebub's Tales, D read the extract (which can be found in Osho's book From Personality to Individuality), about Gurdjieff's use of language in All and Everything, which he thought linked to the discussion, and sums up comments that had been made in the Meetings for months:

Gurdjieff makes strange words, mixing many languages. He knew many languages, nomadic languages which don't have alphabets even. You cannot find dictionaries of them because those languages don't have any dictionary, they don't have any alphabet. They are only dialect, not languages; they are only spoken. And one word does not mean one language: one word means two or three languages joined together. And a long word may run a full sentence -- one word! He is really taxing you as much as he can -- your patience, your intelligence -- but if you can go through the whole book it is really paying: slowly you start getting the knack of his almost impossible words.

When you come across them again and again in different places you can start feeling a certain meaning. You may not be able to say what it is but you start having a sense of it. And if you go through the whole book you are absolutely certain what it is about although you cannot say, because it is only a feeling that it has left within you. His whole effort is somehow to bypass your intellect. Intellectually, you cannot move even one paragraph into it. your intellect will say, "Stop! This is nonsense." And it is nonsense as far as intellect is concerned.

The Meeting then moved to the Reading from Beelzebub's Tales, Chapter 18, "The Arch-Preposterous".

"Having said this, he first closed that part of the surface of the Hrhaharhtzaha, the composition of which had the property of allowing 'rays' to pass through it; then he pulled two switches and pressed a certain button, ... and then having again drawn my attention to the Ammeter and the Voltmeter, he added: '"I have again admitted the influx of parts of the Okidanokh, namely, the Anodnatious and the Cathodnatious of equal force of "striving-to-reblend."'

"When I looked at the Ammeter and the Voltmeter and indeed saw that their needles moved and stopped on the same figures I had noticed the first time we were still outside the Hrhaharhtzaha, I was greatly surprised, because in spite of the indications of the needles and the intimation of Gornahoor Harharkh himself, I had neither noticed nor sensed any change in the degree of my perception of the visibility of the surrounding objects...

T said she thought the word Hrhaharhtzaha might allude, by its rhythm, to a heartbeat. L recalled "R" thinking it was like laughter. D said that Gurdjieff used to go to a cafe to write, with people around him. He would write a paragraph and read it out to the people he was with. If they understood it, he would rewrite it. He repeated this process until it was incomprehensible. This, said D, was what we were dealing with. To L, this procedure seemed a kind of calibration. GC recalled being in a coffee shop with three other people. The four of them divined four different images from patterns of coffee grains, and he suggested the interpretations of Gurdjieff's text might be similarly subjective. "R" thought that there may sometimes be an element of synchronicity involved where elicited interpretations were relevant. GC thought we might need synchronities to make sense of existence, when mathematically, with so many things happening every instant, the chances of synchronicity are high. RM said that the more he is closer to nature (and the more he is paying attention), nature comes to meet him, and that is where the synchronicity seems to come.

"'Furthermore, according to the law called "Heteratogetar," the "Salnichizinooarnian-momentum-vibrations" or "rays" acquire the property of acting on the organs of perception of beings only after they have passed a limit defined by science in the following formula: "the-result-of-the-manifestation-is-proportionate-to-the-force-of-striving-received-from-the-shock."

GC wondered if this was a reference to Newton's Second Law, Force = Mass times Acceleration

"'And so, as the given process of the clash of the two parts of the Okidanokh has the strength of great power, the result of the clash is manifested much further than the place of its arising.

"'Now look!'

"Having said this, he pressed some other button, and suddenly the whole interior of the Hrhaharhtzaha was filled with the same blinding light which, as I have already told you, I experienced when I was outside the Hrhaharhtzaha.

"It appeared that the said light was obtained because by pressing this button, Gornahoor Harharkh had again opened that part of the wall of the Hrhaharhtzaha which had the property of permitting 'rays' to pass through it. " ...

This reminded L of his procedure for composing music, in that he had generally avoided listening to anything good which might drown out his own inspiration, in the same manner that opening part of the wall of the Hrhaharhtzaha produced a blinding light.

A Satori

GC mentioned the Japanese concept of the satori, a mythical creature which can read minds and speaks the thoughts within them, and the only defence against one is to empty the mind.

... "Then with the aid of various appliances which were at one side of the table, he first of all, with complicated manipulation, took out from the box some what is called 'red copper' and placed it on the mentioned plate, and then said: '"This metal is a definite planetary crystallization and is one of the densities required for the said stability in the process called the Common-system-harmonious-movement. It is a formation from preceding processes of the action of the parts of the Omnipresent-Okidanokh; and at the present moment I wish to allow the subsequent transformation of this metal to proceed artificially and acceleratedly by means of the peculiarities of the same factors.

L thought this suggested an active intervention to develop the mind (represented by the metal).

Following the reading, there was discussion of what to do for the exercise in the ensuing month, and a suggestion from GC was adopted, to note successes through the day, however minute, and keep a journal of them.