Alchemy and Evolution

T said that she had been trying the exercise of making a note of any small achievements during the month. She had experienced a few but had not written them down even though this was the intention. The exercise had enabled her to see how plans are easier to make than making plans happen and how untrained her own will power was.

Young Flautist, by Manet.

RM had noticed that by paying attention with all senses: touch, taste, breathing, sight, sound and smell - bringing them all together - his ability to learn music had been enhanced and he was able to retain the ability to remember and play notes and tunes. He had been learning the Irish whistle.

GC had tried the exercise of congratulating himself and had kept it up for three days. However on one occasion, in the kitchen, he had knocked something off the shelf, and instinctively caught it before it reached the floor. He had immediately congratulated himself and experienced a warm glow of achievement.

DM had succeeded in improving his health from the state of dizziness he was experiencing the previous month. His doctor had not been able to resolve the condition, but DM himself had found approaches from researching the internet which reduced his symptoms by 90%.

What colour is the dress?

L found it was hard to write down the triumphs. It was true, as GC had observed, that there is a resistance to acknowledging our successes and achievements and that the mind likes to dwell and wrap itself round the negative. He had found an app online called CoachMe, which sets up peer groups in areas where they perceive a need for improvement - within the groups people record their achievements and congratulate each other. There had also been a news item about a photograph of a dress, which different people see, persistently, as either white and gold, or blue and black. This suggests that reality may not be as we perceive it.

J had read the previous web report and he was trying to be present to himself. He had noticed how often he thought the same thing - the same thought came into his head and it was not original and was not "now", was not present.

Following the contributions, it was time to feed back on them. Responding to RM's remarks about being in the present whilst practicing the Irish whistle, L was reminded of the piano technique he had studied which was originally developed by Theodor Leschetizky. This entailed playing each note not just with a finger or hand, but with the whole body. He had been astonished to find the relaxation exercises set by the piano teacher were identical to several exercises he had come across elsewhere in the martial art, ki aikido. In the "Leschetizky method" there was a focus on presence in body more than presence in mind.

At 9:45 it was time to continue the reading of Beelzebub's Tales. RM requested a brief period to read his interpretation of terms Gurdjieff used in the book. After his summary, it was suggested that his descriptions could be mentioned where the words came up during the reading. The Meeting then continued with the book.

When the said masses of different densities that have thus arisen in planets under normal surrounding conditions radiate from their common presences the vibrations required for the said World-law of Reciprocal-feeding-of- everything-existing, then, among these vibrations of various properties there is established, owing to the fundamental World-law "Troemedekhfe," a reciprocally acting contact.

And the result of this contact is the chief factor in the gradual change of the various densities in planets.

...Now see in what order its artificially accelerated transformations will proceed.

Melanie Klein

J thought Gurdjieff here was describing the creation of the world. L had that image too, but said he also thought the description might also be of psychological changes, of the development of awareness and consciousness. T said that Gurdjieff thought of the human being as a planetary body, and used the term in that sense several times. RM said that Gurdjieff's writing in this book, by design, works on multiple levels simultaneously, "as above, so below". T talked of Melanie Klein's analysis of the development of awareness in babies, which begins with the realisation that there is something other than themselves, and also mentioned Winnicott's work with children.

Having said this, he first fixed before my organ of sight the automatically moving Teskooano and then turned on and off various switches in a certain sequence; and as I looked through the Teskooano he explained to me as follows:

'At this moment I admit the "influx" of all three parts of Okidanokh into the sphere containing this metal; and as all three parts have the same "density" and, hence, the same "force-of-striving," they reblend into a whole in this sphere without changing anything in the presence of the metal; and the Omnipresent-Okidanokh thus obtained flows in its usual state through a special connection out of the Hrhaharhtzaha and is reconcentrated in the first container which you have already seen.

'Now look!

'I deliberately increase the force-of-striving of only one of the active parts of the Okidanokh; for example, I increase the force called Cathodnatious. In consequence of this, you see that the elements composing the presence of that red copper begin to involve towards the quality of the substances that compose the ordinary presences of planets.'

As he explained this, he at the same time turned on and off various switches in a certain sequence.

Although, my boy, I then looked very attentively at everything proceeding, and everything I saw was impressed in my essence 'Pestolnootiarly,' that is, forever, 

This reminded D of RM's technique in learning a musical note. T said the use of the new word Pestolnootiarly forced people to give this very sentence extra attention. GC thought this use of complex words to functionally affect awareness, like a Zen koan, to go beyond thinking rather than convey a specific meaning, was at odds with RM's project to compile a set of definitions of Gurdjieff's invented words. L remarked upon the term Cathodnatious and said he thought it meant negativity, or friction to deter action. By increasing the input of that force the operator of the apparatus can bring consciousness down to earth. D thought that the friction was described as crystallisation. RM talked of the concept of intentional suffering. This was being aware of the friction, and intentionally going with it.

... But I will tell you meanwhile that there proceeded in that fragment of red copper something rather like those terrifying pictures which I occasionally observed among your favorites on the planet Earth through my Teskooano from Mars.

... A rough parallel can be drawn between the occasional proceedings on your planet and the proceedings then in that small fragment of copper, if you imagine yourself high up and looking down upon a large public square, where thousands of your favorites, seized with the most intense form of their chief psychosis, are destroying each other's existence by all kinds of means invented by them themselves, and that in their places there immediately appear what are called their 'corpses,' which owing to the outrages done to them by the beings who are not yet destroyed, change color very perceptibly, as a result of which the general visibility of the surface of the said large square is gradually changed.


... I noticed very clearly that this metal was transformed once upon the said plate into just that same definite metal about which the sorry-savants of your planet have been wiseacring during nearly the whole of their arising and existing, in the hope of transforming other metals into this metal, and thus constantly leading astray their already sufficiently erring brethren.

This metal is called there—'gold.'


T thought that the description of violence in the public square where the colour of live human beings changed to the green of corpses was similar to the way copper changes colour from red to green during oxidation. L thought it was a dispassionate, scientific account of mad warfare between human beings - Gurdjieff did not go in to detail of what was happening in the war, but just said that some of the bodies changed colour (after they died, they would have gone from pink to white), and that from a distance this affected the colouration of the square. This stripped away all the emotion of warfare and depicted it, by metaphor, as a mechanical process. Whether applying negative inclination - Cathodnatious - to humans, or heat to copper carbonate, the result in either case would be a change of colour. For RM the fighting was a description of intolerance between religions leading to war. D said that the Quakers have no creed. RM said this was also true of the Vedic masters.

GC thought in general the passage, and mention of gold, was a reference to alchemy. L said it was reiterating the concept which had come up before that there was a mechanism with three inputs which the operator was calibrating, and by which he was able to make various degrees and levels of consciousness result.

Following the reading, there was a discussion on what to choose as an exercise in the ensuing month. T suggested intentional suffering, to select an activity that the person does not want to do, and to do it daily, making a note every day whether or not it was done.