N remembered particularly one day when it came to him about the beauty of nature. He had decided to go for a long walk, and it was raining. He could watch the trees with water running down, see the grass and how it moved with the water when the raindrops came down. At the same time he tried to do the pushing back and stretching, so that he was fully in his body at the time when he was appreciating nature, and he had felt this was adding to the experience dramatically.
Even though T had remembered the CHALLENGE through the month, and had determined herself to do it after she had got out of the front door, she had been too anxious, with her glove on, and her mask on, and her heavy bag. Once she had got to the park, being in the wide open space, with the trees rustling in the wind, she remembered, and then she opened her arms and embraced it.
L said that it would have been very nice to have left the house, under these circumstances, once a day, and to enjoy nature, but the first thought was how could he avoid that jogger or cyclist who was charging down the road, and which side of the road to walk on for social distancing to avoid getting too close to people. So that worked against the immediate pleasure in nature and embracing of it. He had enjoyed it, and his awareness of it was accentuated. He had noticed the birdsong more, perhaps because there was more, and the beautiful light, especially the evening light, of the previous few days. He had also been aware of the embracing, arms out gesture, and had noticed this shape in nature as well. There was a beautiful tree on the Heath with its boughs curving up on either side, as if the tree were embracing nature, and the previous Thursday evening, just before eight, when there was the now traditional clapping for the health service, there was a rainbow in the same shape, upside down, and the rainbow was symbolic of the health service. He had also sometimes done the embracing as he was leaving. It had been hard to remember all three aspects at the same time.
During the period allocated to responses to specific experiences of doing the Challenge, there were no such responses during the discussion that ensued.
The reading then continued from Chapter 29 of Beelzebub's Tales.
The Greeks were the cause why the Reasons of the three-brained beings there began gradually to degenerate and ultimately became so degenerate that among contemporary beings it is already as our dear Mullah Nassr Eddin says, ‘a-real-mill-for-nonsense.’
And the Romans were the cause why ... those factors are never crystallized in the presences of the contemporary three-brained beings there, which in other three-brained beings engender the impulse called ‘instinctive shame’; that is to say, the being impulse that maintains what are called ‘morals’ and ‘objective morality.’
... According to the investigations of our mentioned countryman, it seems that the earliest ancestors of the beings of the community, which was later called ‘Greece,’ were often obliged, on account of the frequent storms at sea which hindered them in their marine occupations, to seek refuge during the rains and winds, in sheltered places, where out of boredom, they played various ‘games’ which they invented for their distraction.
... As it later became clear, these ancient fishermen amused themselves at first with such games as children now play there—but children, it must be remarked, who have not yet started contemporary schooling—because the children there who do go to school have so much homework to do, consisting chiefly of learning by rote the ‘poetry’ which various candidate Hasnamusses have composed there, that the poor children never have time to play any games.
T was thinking about us in our caves, inventing games now. It was a stark reality that we were bored and inventing games just like the shepherds and the fishermen. When the work was done, or they could not do their work, this dynamic started to happen between people.
J asked if Gurdjieff's explanation of the Greeks and the Romans was a bit simplistic. T thought he was getting at the intellectual life rather than the more comprehensive life, because the shepherds and the fishermen were no longer doing their work, which would have involved every part of them. L said Gurdjieff was also suggesting part of the human being's organism included an automatic spur to morality, and this mechanism got weakened and stopped working, and that was the descent of the human race, which he was attributing here, in his book, to the time of the Greeks and the Romans.
T was thinking that it was to do with the fact that things were written down, and children were being educated out of their own experience and into historic experiences and creations that had gone before them. That there was some sort of degeneration of the children's experience of life which otherwise would lead them to have a natural sense of right and wrong.
N thought that children would always play games. He found Gurdjieff's statement strange, it did not appear to be entirely accurate. The Greeks had an emphasis on healthy mind, healthy body, not just the philosophical ramblings of Aristotle and Plato. All civilisations aspired to something, going through to the peak of their period, to decline later on. So when there's a statement about Romans and Greeks, at what point in time is the statement about? He did not think you could generalise about the Romans and Greeks in this way, because for each there was a period where they were ascending and brought great things to civilisation, and then there was a period when they degenerated.
RM said that we get drawn away into different things rather than focusing on what is important. Particularly if you were meant to be a fisherman - for some reason fishing was not possible because it was stormy, then they learned to play games, and those games were more enjoyable than doing the job they were supposed to be doing. So when the sun's clear and everything is ready for fishing, they would much rather play the games than do that. So for RM the text was saying something about human nature and how we are, and how we have got to watch very carefully what we are doing.
Briefly, these poor bored fishermen played at first the ordinary children’s games already established there long before; but afterwards when one of them invented a new game called ‘pouring-from-the-empty-into-the-void,’ they were all so pleased with it that thereafter they amused themselves with that alone.
This game consisted in formulating some question always about some ‘fiddle-faddle’ or other, that is to say, a question about some deliberate piece of absurdity, and the one to whom the question was addressed had to give as plausible an answer as possible.
... Still a little later, when these bored fishermen had already given place to their descendants, both these inscribed fishskins and the craze for the said peculiar ‘game’ passed on to the latter by inheritance; and these various new inventions, both their own and their ancestors’, they called first by the very high-sounding name ‘science.’
And from then on, as the craze for ‘cooking up’ these sciences passed from generation to generation, the beings of that group, whose ancestors had been simple Asiatic fishermen, became ‘specialists’ in inventing all kinds of sciences such as these.
These sciences, moreover, also passed from generation to generation and a number of them have reached the contemporary beings of that planet almost unchanged.
T asked if it was questioning, or toppling, the authorities and the experts, and that sort of dynamic still went on now. We were faced with hanging on to the science to save us from extinction. RM said he was not sure what Gurdjieff meant with the last paragraph, whether the sciences were a good thing or a bad thing. T said she did not know either, but it stops us in our tracks to question, things that we wouldn't usually question, to tease out what it is, that is valid.
| When you step out for your daily exercise, feel more keenly the beauty of nature, and push back with the hands moving out, away from the body - stretch and feel the greater peace and space. |
| Rainbow over London Thursday, 2 May 2020 |
During the period allocated to responses to specific experiences of doing the Challenge, there were no such responses during the discussion that ensued.
The reading then continued from Chapter 29 of Beelzebub's Tales.
And the Romans were the cause why ... those factors are never crystallized in the presences of the contemporary three-brained beings there, which in other three-brained beings engender the impulse called ‘instinctive shame’; that is to say, the being impulse that maintains what are called ‘morals’ and ‘objective morality.’
... According to the investigations of our mentioned countryman, it seems that the earliest ancestors of the beings of the community, which was later called ‘Greece,’ were often obliged, on account of the frequent storms at sea which hindered them in their marine occupations, to seek refuge during the rains and winds, in sheltered places, where out of boredom, they played various ‘games’ which they invented for their distraction.
... As it later became clear, these ancient fishermen amused themselves at first with such games as children now play there—but children, it must be remarked, who have not yet started contemporary schooling—because the children there who do go to school have so much homework to do, consisting chiefly of learning by rote the ‘poetry’ which various candidate Hasnamusses have composed there, that the poor children never have time to play any games.
T was thinking about us in our caves, inventing games now. It was a stark reality that we were bored and inventing games just like the shepherds and the fishermen. When the work was done, or they could not do their work, this dynamic started to happen between people.
J asked if Gurdjieff's explanation of the Greeks and the Romans was a bit simplistic. T thought he was getting at the intellectual life rather than the more comprehensive life, because the shepherds and the fishermen were no longer doing their work, which would have involved every part of them. L said Gurdjieff was also suggesting part of the human being's organism included an automatic spur to morality, and this mechanism got weakened and stopped working, and that was the descent of the human race, which he was attributing here, in his book, to the time of the Greeks and the Romans.
T was thinking that it was to do with the fact that things were written down, and children were being educated out of their own experience and into historic experiences and creations that had gone before them. That there was some sort of degeneration of the children's experience of life which otherwise would lead them to have a natural sense of right and wrong.
N thought that children would always play games. He found Gurdjieff's statement strange, it did not appear to be entirely accurate. The Greeks had an emphasis on healthy mind, healthy body, not just the philosophical ramblings of Aristotle and Plato. All civilisations aspired to something, going through to the peak of their period, to decline later on. So when there's a statement about Romans and Greeks, at what point in time is the statement about? He did not think you could generalise about the Romans and Greeks in this way, because for each there was a period where they were ascending and brought great things to civilisation, and then there was a period when they degenerated.
RM said that we get drawn away into different things rather than focusing on what is important. Particularly if you were meant to be a fisherman - for some reason fishing was not possible because it was stormy, then they learned to play games, and those games were more enjoyable than doing the job they were supposed to be doing. So when the sun's clear and everything is ready for fishing, they would much rather play the games than do that. So for RM the text was saying something about human nature and how we are, and how we have got to watch very carefully what we are doing.
This game consisted in formulating some question always about some ‘fiddle-faddle’ or other, that is to say, a question about some deliberate piece of absurdity, and the one to whom the question was addressed had to give as plausible an answer as possible.
... Still a little later, when these bored fishermen had already given place to their descendants, both these inscribed fishskins and the craze for the said peculiar ‘game’ passed on to the latter by inheritance; and these various new inventions, both their own and their ancestors’, they called first by the very high-sounding name ‘science.’
And from then on, as the craze for ‘cooking up’ these sciences passed from generation to generation, the beings of that group, whose ancestors had been simple Asiatic fishermen, became ‘specialists’ in inventing all kinds of sciences such as these.
These sciences, moreover, also passed from generation to generation and a number of them have reached the contemporary beings of that planet almost unchanged.
T asked if it was questioning, or toppling, the authorities and the experts, and that sort of dynamic still went on now. We were faced with hanging on to the science to save us from extinction. RM said he was not sure what Gurdjieff meant with the last paragraph, whether the sciences were a good thing or a bad thing. T said she did not know either, but it stops us in our tracks to question, things that we wouldn't usually question, to tease out what it is, that is valid.
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