Ex Pluribus Unum

L had tried the exercise, which was to find something done regularly, and to do it in a different way. He had chosen to turn on taps with a different hand than usual. This had not worked so well. It had taken him a while to remember the exercise, and then it turned out that he quite often turned on taps with the alternate hand anyway, when he was already holding something with the primary hand. But one interesting thing had occupied his mind quite a lot during the month. In the previous Meeting he had mentioned a quotation, Things don’t happen to you, they happen for you, and D had questioned him a few times about it, so he had researched its origin online. It was attributed to many people, but appeared to have originated with Byron Katie. He had done some research about her. She had a website called, coincidentally, thework.com. There was quite a lot in her writing he did not like: a kind of guru fixation, a glib use of karmic ideas - from her logic the holocaust happened for the victims, so there are limitations to her logic, but her concept that people’s thoughts are not really their thoughts, but rather that the thoughts happen to them, was interesting.

RM had been continuing the one minute or four minutes of remembering himself, and had noticed that he worked better under pressure, realised that the reason was that the pressure put him absolutely in the present, and when in the present he was in touch with his intuition and was more effective. This was also why he preferred to work late rather than in the morning, as at night he felt it was time to go to bed, which put him in the present and thereby more creative. Also the moment he would wake up in the morning he was absolutely in the present. It was such a joyful moment that he did not want to get up.

The habit that T had been aware of doing for a while but done nothing about, was of chewing her tongue. She noticed during the month that it had been associated with chores like washing up. She hadn’t realised but the whole psychology was to do with wanting to get something done before she had done it. She had discovered it too in walking, when she had in mind that she had to get there, and she tried to slow down to mindful walking, and it was quite an extraordinary change in pace - you still got to where you are going but a different psychology was happening. She did not try to stop the tongue chewing, but tried to be aware of it, and that was what helped her associate it with times when she was trying do something practical, with hand-eye coordination. It also happened when she was painting, trying to get somewhere in it - it was wanting to be there before she was there.

N had been changing the way he went to work, which created some interesting experiences. One was that you could appreciate the journey which became more of an adventure. You could observe and see things which you hadn’t seen on previous occasions when you were on automatic. He had been thinking about how that could apply to other things in his life, wondering if things would become more interesting, more of an adventure, if there would be more discovery resulting from that process, so from that perspective he was experiencing those things and seeing what I’s were involved in that process, and why he was doing quite a lot of things most probably on automatic, and that led to him thinking about maybe changing other things to see what effect that might have, things we could easily change and reprogram.

“R”’s ongoing complication was laziness and impatience, and there were physical exercises which she tried to do each morning which were physically necessary, and her understanding of her aim was not to improve things but to be in what was. So she was trying a different exercise in the mornings at the moment, and it was not more pleasant, but it was more reminding, and it was very hard to stay with not wishing to improve and have more fun. Trying to use this physical exercise which did not take very many minutes, but enabled her to have the opportunity and be reminded to sense and to feel, and not just look for a label. The very first time, when she was a child, that somebody mentioned to her the idea of consciousness, she remembered having a taste of what it might be as a hundred percent state, and in a way that has also returned from time to time to remind her what she is really hoping or working towards.

A message received from BS of India was read out, and then the Meeting turned to responses.

In response to N’s description of doing routines differently, L said he had been experimenting with an opposite approach, trying to do things in exactly the same sequence each time. There was a concept called habit stacks, which a few people had written about, and in contrast to our attempts to wake up and avoid automatic behaviour, this was a deliberate attempt to preserve energy by making some our behaviour automatic so that it required no energy whatsoever. He had found that interesting as some of the energy saved could be useful. RM said that one of the first principles of organisational development was to get people into a state of regularity as quickly as possible, because while they were unfamiliar with what was going on around them it was very inefficient.

RM also picked up on the saying L had quoted in his contribution, Things don’t happen to you, they happen for you. In one of the chapters of a book he had been working on for twenty years, he had considered the idea that things happen through you. We were not an individual being. Things happened for us and through us. Because we were not individuals, it was more like rivers, they all flowed, but along different paths. They don’t have choice, but everything that happens, happens for the river, and happens for its own learning and so on but is part of something much much bigger, and what L had been saying made a lot of sense, that things just happen. L said that as a composer, he had the experience where musical tunes had an external reality. They came in to the mind, and then the composer wrote them down and formed them into structures, so it was as if they had an external reality. And Byron Katie’s comments about thoughts reminded him of that. It was as if thoughts had an external existence, and were swimming around reality, and latched on to people, and stayed there, and then possibly influenced the people and took them over. He was not sure where this fitted into the Gurdjieff Work, but thought it did help in waking up, if one became aware that our thoughts might not be our own.


Coming back to the earlier subject, N said that when we do things continuously in the same way, there can be some merit in it because it saves energy. He remembered reading the book by Arnold Bennett, How to Live on 24 Hours a Day, where the author automated so many things in his life that he had more time for his writing and creativity. When we learnt any new physical skill, like driving, it first of all started with mental centres, and then eventually went down to the mechanical centre and the body took it over, so that we drive, and we just continue to do these skills automatically. At times he had tried to improve his playing of some guitar pieces, and experienced issues because of habitual skills. The same thing once happened to Julian Bream; who became dissatisfied with his guitar playing and went back and painstakingly retaught himself so as to improve mastery of his technique. So there was sometimes some unlearning that had to take place. Some of the habits may be optimal to our situation, but what happens is that the machine takes over and we don’t even think about our behaviour once it gets to a certain standard of practical usefulness, but it was important that we actually observed what was happening, because it was often happening in unconscious parts of our being which we were not aware. Everything was interconnected, so sleep in one part of the machine was going to cause problems somewhere else in your life, if it wasn’t revealed, looked at, and considered at some level.



L said that paradoxically, if you were going through a sequence of things which form a habit stack, and if you were aware that you were doing that, you could just sit back and watch your body do those actions. So you could be on automatic and self-observing at the same time.

RM said that for Gurdjieff it was more the consciousness of what you were doing which was important, whether or not you were on automatic. He also thought Gurdjieff’s point was that changing the way you did things made you more aware of what you were doing. In RM’s experience, if he was aware of doing something and saw that there was a better way of doing it, he found it effective to slowly shift to the better way while visualising it.

Returning to L’s remarks about Byron Katie’s suggestion that the holocaust happened on some level for the victims, N thought that this was an extremely dangerous way of using the concept of karma. He did not deny that sometimes things happened to us which we are meant to have happen to us, and sometimes we were used, and in a very positive way, although we may not have seen it that way at the time. We were also used in writing music or poetry - when things came through us in that context, the work is considerably better. In a sense, being used at some level, could be very positive, but he did not think that could be talked about in a more generalised view of karma in history.

At 9:45 the Meeting resumed the reading of Beelzebub’s Tales, continuing Chapter 19, Beelzebub’s Second Descent to Earth.

Among these Most High Sacred Individuals there was again His Conformity, the Angel—now already an Archangel—Looisos, of whom, do you remember, I recently told you that during the first great catastrophe to the planet Earth he had been one of the chief regulators in the matter of averting the consequences of that general cosmic misfortune.

So, my boy! The day following this second appearance of the mentioned Sacred Individuals, His Conformity, escorted by one of the Seraphim, his second assistant, made His appearance at my house.


After Te Deums with me, and after certain inquiries of mine concerning the Great Center, His Conformity then condescended to tell me, among other things, that after the collision of the comet Kondoor with the planet Earth, he, or other responsible cosmic Individuals, superintending the affairs of ‘Harmonious-World-Existence,’ had frequently descended to this solar system to observe the actualizing of those measures they had taken in order to avert the consequences of that general cosmic accident.

L found it interesting that this person was called "His Conformity". T noticed the reference to "the Great Centre".

‘And we descended,’ His Conformity continued, ‘because although we had then taken every possible measure and had assured everybody that everything would be quite all right, we ourselves were nevertheless not categorically convinced that no unexpectedness might occur there unforeseen.

...‘But now,’ added His Conformity with a shade of self-satisfaction, ‘the existence of this planet will be quite normal in respect of the common-cosmic harmony. This second catastrophe to the planet Earth has finally quite pacified and convinced us also that a catastrophe on a great scale cannot again occur on account of this planet.

‘Not only has this planet itself now again acquired a normal movement in the general cosmic equilibrium, but its two detached fragments’—which, as I have already told you, are now called Moon and Anoolios—’have also acquired a normal movement and have become, although small, yet independent “Kofensharnian,” that is, additional, planets of that solar system Ors.’

Annulus Platonis

T wondered if some of the words, like Looisos and Anoolios, might be significant. L said they were almost anagrams. "R" said that Anoolios could be seen as "Sol" and "Luna". T was reminded also of the pair of words from an earlier chapter, Cathodnatious and Anodnatious, which compare to this new pair, Looisos and Anoolios. L thought Anoolios was like "annulus", a ring formed from two concentric circles. T thought Anoolios might refer to "annual", or pertain to the Sun.

RM had gathered from his reading the catastrophe might have been to do with moving from unity to duality. A great shock splits everything up into separate parts. L said he was also talking about descending, which suggests giving up a level of consciousness.

...‘Although these Havatvernoni or Religions have nothing in common,’ continued His Conformity, ‘yet nevertheless in these peculiar religions of theirs there is very widely spread among the beings of all three groups the same custom called among them “Sacrificial-Offerings. And this custom of theirs is based on the notion, which can be cognized only by their strange Reason alone, that if they destroy the existence of beings of other forms in honor of their gods and idols, then these imaginary gods and idols of theirs would find it very, very agreeable, and always and in everything unfailingly help and assist them in the actualization of all their fantastic and wild fancies. This custom is at present so widespread there, and the destruction of the existence of beings of various forms for this maleficent purpose has reached such dimensions, that there is already a surplus of the “Sacred Askokin” required from the planet Earth for its former parts, that is to say, a surplus of those vibrations which arise during the sacred process of “Rascooarno” of beings of every exterior form arising and existing on that planet from which the said sacred cosmic arising is required.'

The Sacrifice of Isaac, by Pedro Orrente.

"R" said that the meaning of Rascooarno is death. L asked what was the Sacred Askokin. "R" said that was possibly the result of personal work of transformation of courser substances into finer ones. T wondered if it was to do with questioning, as it contains the word "ask". L said it was talking about vibrations which occur during the process of dying, and those who were being sacrificed would experience fear and distress, and he wondered if that was the surplus sacred askokin. "R" said that Gurdjieff was writing this before the holocaust, but he may have sensed the growing ferment in Europe. N noted that Gurdjieff was Armenian, and there had also been the Turkish massacre of his own people, so he was aware of what mankind could do to mankind, and that sort of destruction which could take place in the name of religion or other doctrines. T said that the text appears to describe sacrifice of animals, but originally there were human sacrifices. N said that changed to sacrifices of goats, and even today there is still much in the newspapers about how animals are killed, and people still want very much to hold on to those systems, even though they are not very humane. L said that the fact that animal sacrifice is still a religious practice in Islam, and referenced symbolically in Jewish practice at Passover, and practiced by some Christians in villages outside Jerusalem, in Palestine. RM said that all the mystical readings he had come across refer to sacrifice purely as sacrificing your attachment to things. N said that in Christianity there was very strongly the sacrifice of Christ - the whole essence of the religion is that God sacrificed His Son. T said they called him the Lamb. RM said the biblical quote "I and my Father are one" was symbolic of the sacrifice of attachment, of "two becomes one". "R" mentioned a 'grace before meals' which was sometimes said by people in the Gurdjieff Work, following its use by J G Bennett and Mrs Staveley, who were pupils of George Gurdjieff.

All life is one

And everything that lives is holy,

Plants, animals and man.

All must eat to live and nourish one another.

We bless the lives that have died to give us food.

Let us eat consciously,

resolving by our work to pay the debt of our existence.

Amen

N mentioned the story of Abraham being asked to sacrifice his son. RM said that having proved he was willing to give up what he was attached to, he no longer needed to, he had passed a test. L said that the story could be looked at the other way, that by agreeing to do this terrible thing he had failed a test.

Following the Reading, there was a discussion on what to do for an exercise. A suggestion for a more extended meditation, from "R", was adopted. These words by Gurdjieff from Beelzebub's Tales may be helpful:

... every day, at sunrise, while watching the reflection of its splendor, you bring about a contact between your consciousness and the various unconscious parts of your general presence. Try to make this state last and to convince the unconscious parts--not as if they were conscious--that if they hinder your general functioning, they, in the period of your responsible age, not only cannot fulfill the good that befits them, but your general presence of which they are part, will not be able to be a good servant of our Common Endless Creator, and by that will not even be worthy to pay for your arising and existence.

An additional suggestion from N (linked to what had been discussed) was also adopted: before and while eating, to be thankful and aware of the work that has gone into its preparation, perhaps entailing the sacrifice of a creature or vegetable.