L said he liked to read a paragraph anyway, every day, to get familiarity with what we would be talking about and reading through the following month, but the requirement that the EXERCISE be done in the hours of dark made it harder, which was all to the good.
If you remembered to do the exercise, it would normally be during daylight, so you would put it off, and might not remember it later. The other twist to it, being aware of the body and having to sit in a different pose made it feel qualitatively different to how he had been reading through it before, which was with the mind, with the intellect.
T had experienced remembering the exercise during the day, and not doing it, and after dark would be completely wiped out for the evening.
The only time she had actually managed it was the day before the Meeting. It had been like cramming for an exam, which felt ridiculous, and it was after dark. She had completely missed the part about the position of the body, and remembered it now because of being reminded. She had found it extremely difficult, and would reflect the next day on the fact that she had forgotten during the evening, and about what it was that was getting in the way. She thought she was possibly doing too much, and had too many obligations, apart from things that she was really, really interested in and wanted very much to do, which were right on the back-burner.
The reading continued from Chapter 23 of Beelzebub's Tales.
And the second fact, by virtue of the same degeneration of their sight into Koritesnokhnian, is ... they perceive the visibility of objects only when almost next to them.
...Here it is very opportune to repeat one of the profound sayings, seldom used there, of our Mullah Nassr Eddin, which very neatly defines the given case, that is, this degree of the limitation of the perception of visibility of your contemporary favorites...
‘Show me the elephant the blind man has seen, and only then will I believe that you have really seen a fly.’ D asked if the saying about the elephant and the fly was another way of talking about the sound of one hand clapping. TR said it was getting to the idea there was no seer and seen, there was only seeing. RM said that the blind man saw with his whole being, and was there. If you were not totally present, here, now, you would see nothing.
We often only saw something when we saw the outcome of it. You only saw the hole when you had fallen down it, but if you were present all the time, you saw it appear before you got to it. L said it was also about the use of language. We saw chairs and tables, partly through decades of conditioning of what chairs and tables were, but we were not seeing ghosts. There might be things around us that we were not seeing because we equally had decades of training to say they did not exist.
... they placed this Teskooano very deeply within the planet, and they carried out their observations of the cosmic concentrations found beyond the atmosphere of their planet through specially bored, pipelike hollows.
The observatory, I then saw, had five of these hollows.
...They made these observations of theirs through any one of the mentioned hollows which looked out in different directions onto their horizon, according to the given position of their planet relative to the cosmic concentration observed in the process of the ‘common cosmic harmonious movement.’
I repeat, my boy, that although the chief peculiarity of the observatory constructed there by the three-brained beings of the future Egypt proved not to be new to me, since this principle had also been utilized in my observatory on Mars, with only this difference, that my seven long pipes were fixed not within the planet but on it, nevertheless all their innovations were so interesting in detail that, for any case that might arise, I even made, during my stay there, a detailed sketch of everything I saw, and later even used something of it for my own observatory.
T said this sounded partly historic, with some sort of observatory made by ancient people to look at the stars. If you thought of the planet as the individual body, the five hollows might represent the five senses,
which were the antennae we had to the external world, but they were deeply hidden inside the body. C agreed that the hollows might be the senses, but said that the construction on Mars had seven. TR said we may have lost two. L said that the description appeared to be of the great pyramid. TR said that each of the five had their own viewpoint, but it was only when they were consolidated did they make an understanding of the whole. We did not use our sight, hearing, smell, touch, taste, to form, to do that whole seeing. We would taste something and label it this, or hear something and label it that. It was only when the elephant was seen by the blind man that it had been seen. It was only when you were concentrating on five that there was a cosmic concentration. GC said that each of the senses was operating on five percent of what was out there, and yet we believed the taste, the sound. It was infinitesimal, and we were just aware of that much, and we based our reality on the senses. We could not see properly - there was a space that the brain filled in. T said it was all we had. TR said it was not all we'd got - there were two more. L asked which were the two senses he thought we had lost. TR said that intuition would certainly be one, and there was something with our relationship to time. L thought this might be connected to being aware of coincidences, synchronicities, which relate things which are separated by time. N said this whole thing was about the limitations of our perceptual system, and how we drew the wrong conclusions from the limited information we had. T said we might also ignore what the senses were saying. She had been walking in central London during the week, and everyone was going about their business, but she could hardly breathe because of the pollution. She was the only one in the street who put a mask on. Everybody was ignoring it - some people were running in it, really taking it into their lungs.
...It is extremely interesting to notice here that they erected at the chief entrance of that huge enclosure a rather large - large of course in comparison with the size of their presences - stone statue called ‘Sphinx’ which strongly reminded me of ...
The statue I saw in the city of Samlios and which greatly interested me, was the emblem of this society, and was called "Conscience".
It represented an allegorical being ...
The main mass of the planetary body of the said allegorical being was represented by the trunk of a being there of definite form, called "Bull".
L said that the reference to the Sphinx shows that Gurdjieff is definitely talking about the complex of pyramids at Giza. T said that he was also talking about a different statue, called Conscience. L said he might be inventing this statue, unless he knew of one we were not aware of.
This Bull trunk rested on the four legs of another being existing there, also of a definite form, called "Lion", and to that part of the Bull trunk called its ‘back’ two large wings were attached similar in appearance to those of a strong bird-being breeding there, called "Eagle".
...Each part of this allegorical figure gives to every member of our society in all the three independently associating parts of his common presence, namely, in the body, in the thoughts, and in the feelings, a shock for corresponding associations for those separate cognizances which in their totality can alone give us the possibility of gradually getting rid of those undesirable factors present in every one of us ...
T said it was about getting rid of "undesirable factors", and to her she wondered if it was the bull factor, the lion factor and the eagle factor. It reminded L of Gurdjieff's morning exercise:
...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 ...
The whole point was that he was thinking of us as composite beings, with parts which may not be conscious, and trying to get those parts to work together. He was seeing us as a mechanism. These composite creatures which he described were depicting that. In the morning exercise he was trying to get the parts to work to a common purpose. T said that did not fit with getting rid of undesirable factors.
T had experienced remembering the exercise during the day, and not doing it, and after dark would be completely wiped out for the evening.
|
EXERCISE
Read one paragraph from the next reading every day after dark, connecting with the body that is reading and maybe sitting in a different posture to read. |
The reading continued from Chapter 23 of Beelzebub's Tales.
And the second fact, by virtue of the same degeneration of their sight into Koritesnokhnian, is ... they perceive the visibility of objects only when almost next to them.
...Here it is very opportune to repeat one of the profound sayings, seldom used there, of our Mullah Nassr Eddin, which very neatly defines the given case, that is, this degree of the limitation of the perception of visibility of your contemporary favorites...
‘Show me the elephant the blind man has seen, and only then will I believe that you have really seen a fly.’ D asked if the saying about the elephant and the fly was another way of talking about the sound of one hand clapping. TR said it was getting to the idea there was no seer and seen, there was only seeing. RM said that the blind man saw with his whole being, and was there. If you were not totally present, here, now, you would see nothing.
Alice sees the rabbit hole too late
From Alice in Wonderland, by With acknowledgements to Walt Disney Studios
Watch on YouTube
From Alice in Wonderland, by With acknowledgements to Walt Disney Studios
Watch on YouTube
... they placed this Teskooano very deeply within the planet, and they carried out their observations of the cosmic concentrations found beyond the atmosphere of their planet through specially bored, pipelike hollows.
The observatory, I then saw, had five of these hollows.
...They made these observations of theirs through any one of the mentioned hollows which looked out in different directions onto their horizon, according to the given position of their planet relative to the cosmic concentration observed in the process of the ‘common cosmic harmonious movement.’
I repeat, my boy, that although the chief peculiarity of the observatory constructed there by the three-brained beings of the future Egypt proved not to be new to me, since this principle had also been utilized in my observatory on Mars, with only this difference, that my seven long pipes were fixed not within the planet but on it, nevertheless all their innovations were so interesting in detail that, for any case that might arise, I even made, during my stay there, a detailed sketch of everything I saw, and later even used something of it for my own observatory.
T said this sounded partly historic, with some sort of observatory made by ancient people to look at the stars. If you thought of the planet as the individual body, the five hollows might represent the five senses,
Source: catchpenny.org/shafts.html |
...It is extremely interesting to notice here that they erected at the chief entrance of that huge enclosure a rather large - large of course in comparison with the size of their presences - stone statue called ‘Sphinx’ which strongly reminded me of ...
The statue I saw in the city of Samlios and which greatly interested me, was the emblem of this society, and was called "Conscience".
It represented an allegorical being ...
The main mass of the planetary body of the said allegorical being was represented by the trunk of a being there of definite form, called "Bull".
L said that the reference to the Sphinx shows that Gurdjieff is definitely talking about the complex of pyramids at Giza. T said that he was also talking about a different statue, called Conscience. L said he might be inventing this statue, unless he knew of one we were not aware of.
This Bull trunk rested on the four legs of another being existing there, also of a definite form, called "Lion", and to that part of the Bull trunk called its ‘back’ two large wings were attached similar in appearance to those of a strong bird-being breeding there, called "Eagle".
Source: etheric.com |
...Each part of this allegorical figure gives to every member of our society in all the three independently associating parts of his common presence, namely, in the body, in the thoughts, and in the feelings, a shock for corresponding associations for those separate cognizances which in their totality can alone give us the possibility of gradually getting rid of those undesirable factors present in every one of us ...
T said it was about getting rid of "undesirable factors", and to her she wondered if it was the bull factor, the lion factor and the eagle factor. It reminded L of Gurdjieff's morning exercise:
...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 ...
The whole point was that he was thinking of us as composite beings, with parts which may not be conscious, and trying to get those parts to work together. He was seeing us as a mechanism. These composite creatures which he described were depicting that. In the morning exercise he was trying to get the parts to work to a common purpose. T said that did not fit with getting rid of undesirable factors.
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