Wooly Thinking

N's creative project had been to prepare a talk about Gurdjieff for the I Ching Society, and where possible bring out any similarities or contrasts with the wisdom in the I Ching. This was a daunting project as he had to go back over the Gurdjieff Work and read up on the I Ching. He had sometimes finished work late in the evening, and then thought he must do something towards his I Ching project, and did find a lot of resistance, for example there were other books around the house which he found more interesting, in some ways, than the I Ching. He then tried to do the Challenge which helped to do something towards the project.

Decide on a creative project for the month, for example an artwork, story, or song. Once a day, when you observe that you are in a decomposing state, stand up, pause, and do something towards that creative project. Observe points of resistance in doing the project during the month, and how they are overcome.

RM's creative project had been learning the piano, on which he had spent at least two minutes a day. He had an app on his phone which helped him align the keys with the letters and the sound. He noticed in retrospect that a lot of the time he was decomposing and did not even know he was, 'I've been busy but what have I produced?' It was shocking for him to realise his human nature. He was finding it very helpful, during that time when he did realise that he was decomposing, to pick up his phone, look at the app, and pick out a few notes. This exercise had been extremely helpful in order to get him to realise he was decomposing and apply the knowledge of that to some project that he had set himself to do.

Responding to RM, T said it was very refreshing to hear about his two minutes, because two minutes is better than no minutes. Psychologically there was such resistance, but you did not have to do anything more than that, to touch base, and then that two minutes might expand.

The reading then continued from Chapter 29 of Beelzebub's Tales.

        

With acknowledgements to Harold Good
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For your clear representation and better understanding how these contemporary direct heirs have surpassed their ‘legators’, I must now explain to you also about certain widely used means existing there at the present time, which owe their existence exclusively to these ‘Nature-helping’ direct heirs of ancient Greece.

I will explain to you certain of these means there, now existing and in use everywhere, which have been invented by the beings of that contemporary community Germany.

I should like first to emphasize, by the way, one very odd phenomenon, namely, that these contemporary ‘substitutes’ for the ancient Greeks give names to their said maleficent inventions, names which for some reason or other all end in ‘ine.’

As examples of the very many particularly maleficent inventions of those German beings, let us take just those five what are called ‘chemical substances,’ now existing there under the names of (1) satkaine, (2) aniline, (3) cocaine, (4) atropine and (5) alisarine, which chemical substances are used there at the present time by the beings of all the continents and islands as our dear Mullah Nassr Eddin says: ‘Even-without-any-economising.’

Wernher von Braun 1912-1977
Chief architect of the Saturn V launch vehicle

N said that last time he was criticising the Greeks and the Romans, and now he was criticising the Germans as the creators of these strange sciences, and it seemed to be quite serious, negative criticism of these cultures and what they did. T thought he had moved on in history. Germany and all the European countries were the high culture of the Western world at that time, and suddenly there was this catastrophe happening, because it was also saying that all the continents and islands were doing it, even without economising, so it took hold. RM said that when people follow on later in life, like the Germans following the Greeks, they tend to take on their own interpretation and add their own meaning to things. He got this sense that Gurdjieff was talking about human nature from one group to another, who had been given great, wise words. What happens biblically is that Jesus Christ may say wonderful things, and then people that follow that add their own interpretation, and eventually the original meaning gets completely lost, and people use it as a power tool. T was wondering if the legators were the previous civilisation. L said that during the course of his book, not only does he invent gurus, like Ashiata Shiemash, and then destroy them afterwards, there was also no civilisation and no part of the world which escapes his wit and criticism. So at the moment it was Germany, and no doubt it was every other country in Europe which will shortly follow. T asked if Beelzebub was not the objective eye? He was not the devil's advocate, he was the devil, Beelzebub, and he was talking as someone from Mars. He had that outer viewpoint, looking down. A asked if it was also the disconnection between individuals inventing things and not taking responsibility for their inventions and what they do. Wernher von Braun was enjoying developing rockets; flying to the moon did not seem to matter too much.

... owing to the fact that there was then proceeding in the presences of the beings of their community, consequently in them themselves, what is called ‘the-most-intense-experiencing’ of the chief particularity of the psyche of the three-brained beings of your planet, namely, ‘the-urgent-need-to-destroy-the-existence-of-others-like-themselves’—and indeed, the beings of that community were then fully absorbed in their process of reciprocal destruction with the beings of neighboring communities—these others thereupon at once ‘enthusiastically’ decided to devote themselves entirely to finding means to employ the special property of that gas for the speedy mass destruction of the existence of the beings of other communities.

L said he assumed this was about the use of mustard gas in World War 1. The way Gurdjieff described war was just like a scientist describing the way something growing in a Petri dish might change colour or shape, or some phenomenon in nature or the cosmos. He was describing behaviour in a very abstract sense, even though to us personally it is incredibly destructive and cruel behaviour. T said he may be commenting on it in that way because it is automatic behaviour and inevitable if there is no conscious awareness of what they are actually doing. L said that people behaving automatically tend to be in conflict with others who are behaving automatically, as for instance there is a desire for growth when resources are limited.

The second of the chemical substances I enumerated, namely, ‘aniline,’ is that chemical coloring substance, by means of which most of those surplanetary formations can be dyed from which the three-brained beings there make all kinds of objects they need in the process of their ordinary being-existence.

Although thanks to that invention your favorites can now dye any object any color, yet, what the lastingness of the existence of these objects becomes—ah, just there lies their famous Bismarck’s ‘pet cat.’

Before that maleficent aniline existed, the objects produced by your favorites for their ordinary existence, such, for instance, as what are called ‘carpets,’ ‘pictures,’ and various articles of wool, wood, and skin, were dyed with simple vegetable dyes, which they had learned during centuries how to obtain, and these just-enumerated objects would formerly last from five to ten or even fifteen of their centuries.

T thought it was talking about how the new chemical dyes did not last, whereas the dying which was done naturally in harmony with nature lasts for centuries. N said that Gurdjieff was a carpet dealer, and would understand about vegetable dyes and the newer chemical ones. L assumed that here Gurdjieff was talking about long-term change to people.