After the Meeting, L had been on the lookout for use of the ideas of subjective and objective. There had been a programme about Brexit which referred to objective and subjective interpretations, and he thought this was a good example because it was an objective fact that there was a vote, and a result, but then there were so many interpretations.
He had come to the conclusion that nearly everything is subjective. If you looked at a particle at the quantum level, then its reality changed. That was subjectivity - reality might be different for everybody. He had a musical idea that morning which he had made a note of. It was subjective, and would remain so until somebody else heard it. The 'celeste', a musical instrument, which came to the mind of Victor Mustel, was subjective until he made it real, naming it after its celestial sound. It became particularly objective after Tchaikovsky brought one to Russia and, most famously, used it in The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy.
There were no other contributions which mentioned a specific instance of doing the challenge during the month. A message from BS of India, who has been following these Meetings for many years, was read out. Following that was the time allocated for the 'responses to contributions', however none pertained to doing the challenge. The reading continued from Chapter 27 of Beelzebub's Tales.
... And so, after arriving in the town Djoolfapal, the Very Saintly Ashiata Shiemash established corresponding relations with these brethren of the mentioned brotherhood who were working upon that abnormally proceeding functioning of their psyche which they themselves had constated, and he began enlightening their Reason by means of objectively true information, and guiding their being-impulses in such a way that they could sense these truths without the participation either of the abnormally crystallized factors already within their presences, or of the factors which might newly arise from the results of the external perceptions they obtained from the abnormally established form of ordinary being-existence.
J said that the critical phrase here was "the abnormally crystallized factors". What he seemed to be saying was that there was a tendency, even a likelihood, both in the organisation of society, and in our own thinking, for stupid, or silly, or somehow suspect, or odd, abnormally crystallised ideas, to take root, unless we were vigilant. That was just a human problem that we ought to recognise, and we had within ourselves, or the society had within itself, the data by means of which we could combat this tendency. L said that the crystallisation means inflexibility - they get in a fixed form, where they stay. T said that then they get followers, who were gullible because they could not think for themselves. "R" asked if we - at the Meeting - could think for ourselves. N asked where the place itself, Djoolfapal, might be. L said it was in Asia, as was recounted a little earlier in the chapter: "Ashiata Shiemash ... did not again return to the city of Babylon but went straight to the capital city Djoolfapal of the country then called Kurlandtech, which was situated in the middle of the continent Asia."
... the Very Saintly Ashiata Shiemash sent these same brethren to various places and commissioned them under his general guidance to spread the information that in the subconsciousness of people there are crystallized and are always present the data manifested from Above for engendering in them the Divine impulse of genuine conscience, and that only he who acquires the ‘ableness’ that the actions of these data participate in the functioning of that consciousness of theirs in which they pass their everyday existence, has in the objective sense the honest right to be called and really to be a genuine son of our COMMON FATHER CREATOR of all that exists.
Referring to the assertion above of who would have "the honest right to be called and really to be a genuine son of our COMMON FATHER CREATOR of all that exists", GC asked why should we believe that, why should we give that any credence at all, whatsoever. J said that as he understood the passage, the critical facet of any over-arching universal being, was conscience - the way you allocated the natural law, the justified law, the good feeling - that was paramount. "R" said it was a metaphor for something which is common to all of us, which is almost all the time suppressed, negated and asleep. L said it was also indicating that it was an objective truth, that within us, is conscience. RM said that it was neither social conditioning, nor spiritual, religious conditioning. The conscience Gurdjieff was talking about was, he thought, a much higher level, higher order of conscience. It was not a social conscience. J quoted Shakespeare: Conscience does make cowards of us all.
According to the statutes drawn up by the Very Saintly Ashiata Shiemash, any brother could become an All-the-rights-possessing brother of the brotherhood Heechtvori, only when in addition to the other also foreseen definite objective attainments, he could bring himself—in the sense of ‘ableness-of-conscious-direction-of-the-functioning-of-his-own-psyche’—to be able to know how to convince to perfection a hundred other beings and to prove to them that the impulse of being-objective-conscience exists in man, and secondly how it must be manifested in order that a man may respond to the real sense and aim of his existence, and moreover so to convince them that each of these others, in their turn, should acquire in themselves what is called the ‘Required-intensity-of-ableness,’ to be able to convince and persuade not less than a hundred others also.
L said that it seemed to him that what was being described here was a dangerous pyramid scheme, where each person proselytises to a hundred others, and tries to get them to do the same, and before you knew where you were, you had a big religion. GC asked what was meant by the Required-intensity-of-ableness? L said they were being trained up to be salesmen. J said that Gurdjieff was not necessarily being cynical about this, because there may be, in his way of looking at it, a genuine conscience that could be informing the whole process. It seemed to him that Gurdjieff was looking at the process whereby all religions and cults come in to being, and he was holding up that process for us to look at. RM said that what he found interesting here was the phrase: to prove to them that the impulse of being-objective-conscience exists in man. RM took that to mean that there is a common understanding that does actually exist in man fundamentally.
| Observe through the month when something arises in your life about which can be asked - is it an objective truth or is it a subjective truth? |
Lauren Cuthbertson performs the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy
at the Royal Opera House in 2017 - Source YouTube
at the Royal Opera House in 2017 - Source YouTube
J said that the critical phrase here was "the abnormally crystallized factors". What he seemed to be saying was that there was a tendency, even a likelihood, both in the organisation of society, and in our own thinking, for stupid, or silly, or somehow suspect, or odd, abnormally crystallised ideas, to take root, unless we were vigilant. That was just a human problem that we ought to recognise, and we had within ourselves, or the society had within itself, the data by means of which we could combat this tendency. L said that the crystallisation means inflexibility - they get in a fixed form, where they stay. T said that then they get followers, who were gullible because they could not think for themselves. "R" asked if we - at the Meeting - could think for ourselves. N asked where the place itself, Djoolfapal, might be. L said it was in Asia, as was recounted a little earlier in the chapter: "Ashiata Shiemash ... did not again return to the city of Babylon but went straight to the capital city Djoolfapal of the country then called Kurlandtech, which was situated in the middle of the continent Asia."
... the Very Saintly Ashiata Shiemash sent these same brethren to various places and commissioned them under his general guidance to spread the information that in the subconsciousness of people there are crystallized and are always present the data manifested from Above for engendering in them the Divine impulse of genuine conscience, and that only he who acquires the ‘ableness’ that the actions of these data participate in the functioning of that consciousness of theirs in which they pass their everyday existence, has in the objective sense the honest right to be called and really to be a genuine son of our COMMON FATHER CREATOR of all that exists.
Referring to the assertion above of who would have "the honest right to be called and really to be a genuine son of our COMMON FATHER CREATOR of all that exists", GC asked why should we believe that, why should we give that any credence at all, whatsoever. J said that as he understood the passage, the critical facet of any over-arching universal being, was conscience - the way you allocated the natural law, the justified law, the good feeling - that was paramount. "R" said it was a metaphor for something which is common to all of us, which is almost all the time suppressed, negated and asleep. L said it was also indicating that it was an objective truth, that within us, is conscience. RM said that it was neither social conditioning, nor spiritual, religious conditioning. The conscience Gurdjieff was talking about was, he thought, a much higher level, higher order of conscience. It was not a social conscience. J quoted Shakespeare: Conscience does make cowards of us all.
According to the statutes drawn up by the Very Saintly Ashiata Shiemash, any brother could become an All-the-rights-possessing brother of the brotherhood Heechtvori, only when in addition to the other also foreseen definite objective attainments, he could bring himself—in the sense of ‘ableness-of-conscious-direction-of-the-functioning-of-his-own-psyche’—to be able to know how to convince to perfection a hundred other beings and to prove to them that the impulse of being-objective-conscience exists in man, and secondly how it must be manifested in order that a man may respond to the real sense and aim of his existence, and moreover so to convince them that each of these others, in their turn, should acquire in themselves what is called the ‘Required-intensity-of-ableness,’ to be able to convince and persuade not less than a hundred others also.
L said that it seemed to him that what was being described here was a dangerous pyramid scheme, where each person proselytises to a hundred others, and tries to get them to do the same, and before you knew where you were, you had a big religion. GC asked what was meant by the Required-intensity-of-ableness? L said they were being trained up to be salesmen. J said that Gurdjieff was not necessarily being cynical about this, because there may be, in his way of looking at it, a genuine conscience that could be informing the whole process. It seemed to him that Gurdjieff was looking at the process whereby all religions and cults come in to being, and he was holding up that process for us to look at. RM said that what he found interesting here was the phrase: to prove to them that the impulse of being-objective-conscience exists in man. RM took that to mean that there is a common understanding that does actually exist in man fundamentally.
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