L had been aware of instances every day. On the first day, it was the removal of a portrait of the Queen from an Oxford college Common Room. So he crossed his legs and uncrossed them, and in response went straight into a core activity, sending music files for a forthcoming concert that was meant to be happening. The next day he read an article about attempts to prevent Shakespeare from being included in American school libraries. The next day, there was news that 150 Oxford dons were withholding tutorials to protest that a statue of Cecil Rhodes was not being removed. Usually he followed the trigger by focusing on writing music in a more strongly attentive, resolute way, without distraction.
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T had heard the news about the acknowledgement that the COVID-19 virus may have originated in a Wuhan lab leak, and might have infected three scientists before December 2019, and she realised that this was knowledge that had been withheld, and she crossed and uncrossed her legs. Another time she heard that the British Library was going through its book collection to take out works that were deemed racist. And she crossed and uncrossed her legs. This horrified her because the brief of the British Library is to have a copy of every book ever written in the UK, as a historical knowledge pool for research and study for an objective uncensored base. For the final phase of the challenge to live her core activity, she didn't do it immediately, and then when she did do it, she didn't connect the work consciously to the challenge.
During the period allocated to responses, there was much discussion, but nothing was said about specific instances of doing the challenge.
The reading then continued from Chapter 30 of Beelzebub's Tales.
... The past and especially the last two centuries have shown us that during those inevitable psychoses of the masses, from which wars between states and various popular revolts within states always arise, many of the innocent victims of the popular bestiality are invariably those who, owing to their piety and conscious sacrifices, are worthy to be initiates and through whom various Legominisms containing information about all kinds of real events which have taken place in the past are transmitted to the conscious beings of succeeding generations.
L said it didn't bode well for the future. It talked about the inevitable psychosis of the masses, which we were observing earlier in the Meeting. J said it was not all as new as we might suppose. T said it described the double bind. The people who, owing to their piety and conscious sacrifice, the quiet people - "through whom various Legominisms containing information about all kinds of real events" are under attack. Real here was the operative word, the ones that maintain uncensored historic facts threaten distorted beliefs. J thought the phrase popular bestiality was the thing here - social media today was a great foghorn in this, and had allowed it to grow. O said that the interesting thing was whether there is something in nature that opposes knowledge, because we know that some people who tried to bring peace or some kind of truthfulness were murdered. RM thought we have a natural tendency to want to be right about our opinions. And if we think we're right about our opinions, then we will go against any other opinion that is opposite to our own. He thought it was just human nature.
... when the mass of ordinary people fall into the said psychosis and split into their usual two opposing camps, then these latter, in their state of bestialized reason during their fighting, begin to entertain morbid suspicions of just those who in normal times have always been unassuming and serious; and then, if it should happen that the attention of those under this psychosis should rest a little longer on these exceptional men, they no longer have any doubt whatever that these serious and outwardly always quiet men have undoubtedly also in normal times been nothing more nor less than the “spies” of their present enemies and foes.
O liked what he said about the quiet man, that tends to be a scientist. J said that this was very percipient. It was absolutely transposable, if you took out the allegorical language, to today. T said that the quote, "silence is violence" is absolutely profound, because if you don't say anything, then you are accused of being violent, because you are not agreeing with the diktat from those that think that they are right. O thought there were two things going on. We are subject to the social order which comes with its own definition and we have to abide by it, and there is the other stuff that is open to interpretation. L said silence gives information, to call it violence is wrong, it means somebody is thinking about something. O did not agree, as sometimes when you went for the right cause, and people were passive and not supporting you, it might actually be an act of violence. T said that the key words were "might be".
... Well then, my highly esteemed colleagues, if you wish to know my personal opinion, then I shall sincerely tell you with all my being that in spite of all I have told you about the transmission of true knowledge to distant generations through corresponding initiates by means of Legominisms, there is now nothing whatever to be done through these means.
Let this means be continued as before, as it has been on the Earth from the dawn of centuries and as this form of transmission by initiates through their “ableness-to-be” was renewed by the great prophet Ashiata Shiemash.
... Either these human Afalkalna themselves, and in particular those which are made of lasting materials, will survive and for various reasons will be handed down to men of distant generations, or copies of them will pass from generation to generation, thanks to the property which is rooted in the essence of man of giving out as one’s own, after having changed some minor detail, one or another of the productions of man which have reached them from long past epochs.
It struck L that the enneagram is a good example of legominism, and that seemed to be a tweaked change to an older design that was used by the Sufis. So here, in the passage, Gurdjieff talks about adapting previous things that were passed down, in the light of new knowledge. RM said that Freud had set the foundation for psychoanalysis, but a lot had since changed, but without him the foundation would not have been built, not at that time anyway. L said that Freud was also building on the ancient Greek myths. T said that Freud's work was also experiential, he was a scientist, because he was a neurologist before his analytic sessions. O said that some of Freud's work was distorted by people who did not read it properly. L said that this happened to Gurdjieff's own enneagram, which got turned into a kind of horoscope, a huge industry. People want to know which enneagram number they are, but that had very little relationship to Gurdjieff's analysis. T said, going back to the first paragraph where it says, in quotes, "ableness-to-be". She thought that was key. Before you can think, you have to have the ability to be in yourself, to have a strong basis.
