L had found this EXERCISE really helped him to read more of the paragraphs, and also because each time he started from the beginning and then added an extra paragraph, it meant he got to know the first paragraph particularly well, and the next few better and better also, and each day they would be recapped. He managed to do it virtually every day. Reading it this way, he found it made sense. He really understood and appreciated that Gurdjieff was talking about how things went downhill as astrologers became astronomers, and you could see the same thing in many areas of life. Things had gone downhill in music, because many composers abandoned the skills of harmony and counterpoint. They decided choosing notes randomly, in the case of some composers, might be a better approach. L could see it might be a much easier approach. You got out of something roughly what you put into it.
In the case of harmony and counterpoint, you sometimes got out a bit more. He had found the exercise very useful, and might keep on using it in future months, and thought it would help during the reading section later in the Meeting.
T had been aware of the exercise, and did eight paragraphs during the month. She had gained something from the reading. The first paragraph was the most complex, which was offputting. It was a relief that it was only one extra paragraph each day, a bite-sized chunk. Even though she had started to enjoy it, other distractions came along and she lapsed, so it was interesting in terms of how difficult it was to do something every day, consistently and methodically.
R had picked up the book from Watkins, Cecil Court. He had started at the beginning of the chapter, to get hold of what happened prior. He had tried Beelzebub before, and put it aside. But this time the light had come on. The understanding he got was that reading it in a literal sense, taking it per se, was going against the grain of the wood. The whole thing was to disabuse oneself of previous ideas and to open up an avenue, an inroad of higher consciousness or a higher centre.
The Meeting continued reading from Beelzebub's Tales, Chapter 23.
Inasmuch as the difference in significance and sense, in relation to surrounding beings, between those ... who at that time were such professionals, and those who have now, as it were, the same occupation, might show you, so to say, ‘the obviousness of the steady deterioration of the degree of crystallization’, ... I therefore find it necessary to explain to you and to help you to have an approximate understanding of this difference, which is also changing for the worse.
... they had to draw up their ‘Oblekioonerish’ which is the same as what your favorites call ‘horoscope’; and later ... guide them and give corresponding indications on the basis of the said Oblekioonerish and also on the basis of the cosmic laws, constantly explained by them, flowing from the actions of the results of other large cosmic concentrations in general on the process of being-existence of beings on all planets.
D said that he could not understand the paragraphs just read and asked for an explanation. RM said Gurdjieff was talking about the difference between astronomers, who actually had the facts, as far as they could really see it, and the wiseacring astrologers who had pushed them aside. J said his understanding of it was that there was a corpus of knowledge which you obtained by dint of a huge amount of effort, and then thereafter it split into two ways. The knowledge itself became stale, repetition, the names that you understood, while at the same time there was an outshoot of fantasy where people wanted more interpretation that was in fact wiseacring and not really justified.
... they assigned to the beings at the seventh year of their existence, likewise on the basis of these Oblekioonerishes, corresponding mates of the opposite sex for the purpose of fulfilling one of the chief being-duties, that is, continuation of the race, or as your favorites would say, they assigned them ‘husbands’ and ‘wives.’
Justice must be done to your favorites of the period when these Astrologers existed among them; they then indeed very strictly carried out the indications of these Astrologers and made their conjugal unions exclusively only according to their indications.
Therefore, at that period, in regard to their conjugal unions, they always corresponded according to their type, just as such pairs correspond everywhere on planets on which Keschapmartnian beings also breed.
RM said he was being critical of the astrologers. Conjugal unions were made only to their indications. They started controlling everybody else. T said doing this at the seventh year was child abuse. L said he was also saying that the astronomers were fantasists. RM said it did not say anthing about astronomers being fantasists. T said that the astrologers at that time did not have telescopes. Astrologers used observations of the movements of the heavens. They were astute observers. RM said that astrologers were lying. It was just fantasy. L asked if anyone present ever looked at horoscopes. GC and RM said they sometimes looked, but just for fun. D said it was rubbish. L asked RM what his star sign was. RM said it was Aries. DM said he was also Aries. J said he was also an Aries. L asked what were the characteristics of an Aries. DM said pioneers. L suggested leaders. RM said, single-minded, dominating in their views. J said charming, good looking. T said it was still in the culture. L said it was in the language. We talked about saturnine and jovial. He asked if we had any reason to think astrology was not true. RM said that we did.
... Owing to all this, the pairs matched according to their indications almost always turned out to be corresponding, and not as it proceeds there at the present time; and that is to say they are now united in conjugal pairs who nearly always do not correspond in type; in consequence of which during the continuation of the entire existence of these couples there, about half of their, as they say, ‘inner life’ is spent only on what our esteemed Mullah Nassr Eddin expresses in one of his sayings by the following words:
‘What a good husband he is, or what a good wife she is, whose whole inner world is not busy with the constant “nagging of the other half.”’
... these Astrologers’ of theirs, as usually happens there, also at first began gradually to ‘shrink’ and then entirely, as is said, ‘vanished.’
After the total abolition among them of the duties of these Astrologers, other professionals in the same sphere appeared in their place, ... but as the ordinary beings around these professionals soon noticed that their ‘observations’ and ‘studies’ consisted merely in inventing names for various remote suns and planets meaning nothing to them, existing in milliards in the Universe, and in measuring, as it were, by a method known to them alone, and which constituted their professional secret, the distance between the cosmic points seen from their planets through their ‘child’s toys’ called by them ‘telescopes,’ they began to call them, as I have already told you, Astronomers.
Now, my boy, that we have spoken also about these contemporary ‘ultra fantasists’ from among your favorites, we might as well, again imitating the form of mentation and the verbal exposition of our dear teacher Mullah Nassr Eddin, also ‘illuminatingly’ enlighten you about their significance, so esteemed by your favorites.
L said that here was an example where he described the astronomers as fantasists. RM said they became the fantasists later. T said that astronomers were looking out rather than trying to observe themselves. L said the passage seemed to be true. We were building ever better telescopes, but all that happened was that we discovered new planets, called them such and such, and noted their distances from us, but it did not really add to any state of knowledge. T imagined somebody millions of light years away on another planet who suddenly discovered Earth: they were looking at us, but why, when they had it all there, and didn't even understand themselves? It was a distraction. J said it was a respectable endeavour to get your facts before you worked out your theory. GC said the mind needed to give names to facts, that was how the mind understood them, but we were talking about understanding without the mind. True inspiration in music came from beyond the mind. L said that knowledge of music theory was not needed to listen to it and appreciate it. RM thought you had to keep the outer and the inner in balance. If you went too far one way or the other you got into fantasy.
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EXERCISE
Read the first paragraph of the reading for the next Meeting on the first day, the first two paragraphs on the second, the first three paragraphs on the third and so on, adding a paragraph each day until the Meeting. |
T had been aware of the exercise, and did eight paragraphs during the month. She had gained something from the reading. The first paragraph was the most complex, which was offputting. It was a relief that it was only one extra paragraph each day, a bite-sized chunk. Even though she had started to enjoy it, other distractions came along and she lapsed, so it was interesting in terms of how difficult it was to do something every day, consistently and methodically.
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Watkins Bookshop |
The Meeting continued reading from Beelzebub's Tales, Chapter 23.
Inasmuch as the difference in significance and sense, in relation to surrounding beings, between those ... who at that time were such professionals, and those who have now, as it were, the same occupation, might show you, so to say, ‘the obviousness of the steady deterioration of the degree of crystallization’, ... I therefore find it necessary to explain to you and to help you to have an approximate understanding of this difference, which is also changing for the worse.
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Antikythera mechanism
Modern recreation of design from c.100 BC |
... they had to draw up their ‘Oblekioonerish’ which is the same as what your favorites call ‘horoscope’; and later ... guide them and give corresponding indications on the basis of the said Oblekioonerish and also on the basis of the cosmic laws, constantly explained by them, flowing from the actions of the results of other large cosmic concentrations in general on the process of being-existence of beings on all planets.
D said that he could not understand the paragraphs just read and asked for an explanation. RM said Gurdjieff was talking about the difference between astronomers, who actually had the facts, as far as they could really see it, and the wiseacring astrologers who had pushed them aside. J said his understanding of it was that there was a corpus of knowledge which you obtained by dint of a huge amount of effort, and then thereafter it split into two ways. The knowledge itself became stale, repetition, the names that you understood, while at the same time there was an outshoot of fantasy where people wanted more interpretation that was in fact wiseacring and not really justified.
... they assigned to the beings at the seventh year of their existence, likewise on the basis of these Oblekioonerishes, corresponding mates of the opposite sex for the purpose of fulfilling one of the chief being-duties, that is, continuation of the race, or as your favorites would say, they assigned them ‘husbands’ and ‘wives.’
Justice must be done to your favorites of the period when these Astrologers existed among them; they then indeed very strictly carried out the indications of these Astrologers and made their conjugal unions exclusively only according to their indications.
Therefore, at that period, in regard to their conjugal unions, they always corresponded according to their type, just as such pairs correspond everywhere on planets on which Keschapmartnian beings also breed.
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RM said he was being critical of the astrologers. Conjugal unions were made only to their indications. They started controlling everybody else. T said doing this at the seventh year was child abuse. L said he was also saying that the astronomers were fantasists. RM said it did not say anthing about astronomers being fantasists. T said that the astrologers at that time did not have telescopes. Astrologers used observations of the movements of the heavens. They were astute observers. RM said that astrologers were lying. It was just fantasy. L asked if anyone present ever looked at horoscopes. GC and RM said they sometimes looked, but just for fun. D said it was rubbish. L asked RM what his star sign was. RM said it was Aries. DM said he was also Aries. J said he was also an Aries. L asked what were the characteristics of an Aries. DM said pioneers. L suggested leaders. RM said, single-minded, dominating in their views. J said charming, good looking. T said it was still in the culture. L said it was in the language. We talked about saturnine and jovial. He asked if we had any reason to think astrology was not true. RM said that we did.
... Owing to all this, the pairs matched according to their indications almost always turned out to be corresponding, and not as it proceeds there at the present time; and that is to say they are now united in conjugal pairs who nearly always do not correspond in type; in consequence of which during the continuation of the entire existence of these couples there, about half of their, as they say, ‘inner life’ is spent only on what our esteemed Mullah Nassr Eddin expresses in one of his sayings by the following words:
‘What a good husband he is, or what a good wife she is, whose whole inner world is not busy with the constant “nagging of the other half.”’
... these Astrologers’ of theirs, as usually happens there, also at first began gradually to ‘shrink’ and then entirely, as is said, ‘vanished.’
After the total abolition among them of the duties of these Astrologers, other professionals in the same sphere appeared in their place, ... but as the ordinary beings around these professionals soon noticed that their ‘observations’ and ‘studies’ consisted merely in inventing names for various remote suns and planets meaning nothing to them, existing in milliards in the Universe, and in measuring, as it were, by a method known to them alone, and which constituted their professional secret, the distance between the cosmic points seen from their planets through their ‘child’s toys’ called by them ‘telescopes,’ they began to call them, as I have already told you, Astronomers.
Now, my boy, that we have spoken also about these contemporary ‘ultra fantasists’ from among your favorites, we might as well, again imitating the form of mentation and the verbal exposition of our dear teacher Mullah Nassr Eddin, also ‘illuminatingly’ enlighten you about their significance, so esteemed by your favorites.
L said that here was an example where he described the astronomers as fantasists. RM said they became the fantasists later. T said that astronomers were looking out rather than trying to observe themselves. L said the passage seemed to be true. We were building ever better telescopes, but all that happened was that we discovered new planets, called them such and such, and noted their distances from us, but it did not really add to any state of knowledge. T imagined somebody millions of light years away on another planet who suddenly discovered Earth: they were looking at us, but why, when they had it all there, and didn't even understand themselves? It was a distraction. J said it was a respectable endeavour to get your facts before you worked out your theory. GC said the mind needed to give names to facts, that was how the mind understood them, but we were talking about understanding without the mind. True inspiration in music came from beyond the mind. L said that knowledge of music theory was not needed to listen to it and appreciate it. RM thought you had to keep the outer and the inner in balance. If you went too far one way or the other you got into fantasy.
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