Sensorium

Reflections on the Challenge

When you awake with a dream in mind, observe any insights or emotions that arise. Allow space for hidden wisdom to surface. Stretch your arms.

• Experiences

  L had dreamt of guiding a young American woman through London, describing a piano-shaped cinema, now demolished. She was indifferent, and if anything, annoyed. This led him to realise his role was not to seek shared enthusiasm but to create authentically. In another dream, he was discussing the ‘Four Principles’. He remembered Covey had seven and subsequently found multiple sets of principles in Mormon teachings.

  T had dreamt of a criminal man in power who executed those who knew his crimes. She described a horrific scene where he came across a line of people sitting, and shot one at point-blank range, his head collapsing as if swallowing the bullet. This evoked reflections on the line of defenceless people who sat knowing the truth but were powerless to act. She stretched out her arms and this action brought to mind the sculpture of the Angel of the North, symbolising full embrace and openness, contrasting the violence she witnessed in the dream. She also reflected on V, a rigid and emotionally closed individual, unable to progress in playing a musical instrument, due to a lack of humility. She noted that true mastery in any art demands continuous striving and vulnerability, traits that V had rejected in favour of avoiding this challenge and taking up control over others, in other areas of life.

  J had recalled the challenge on one occasion upon waking, and stretched his arms - but was then unable to remember his dream. This set him reflecting about forgetting dreams, which he likened to former incarnations. He reasoned that just as dreams can slip away despite effort, past existences might similarly fade from memory.

• Responses

  N noted the rise in political violence and unrest, emphasizing the dangers of anarchy and the pressures individuals face under systems of control. He reflected on how fear and violence have become increasingly visible in societal structures, leading to a climate of uncertainty and suppression.

Beelzebub’s Tales, Chapter 32

• Passage

  all the sacred data put in by Great Nature Herself for forming in them their real being-consciousness become isolated and remain during the entire period of their existence in their almost primitive state, ...

  Although such a ‘localization’ of accidentally perceived ‘impressions’ is found in them and although they are aware of its action, yet, in respect of any functioning inherent in their planetary body as well as in respect of the acquisition in their common presence of Objective-Reason, it plays no part.

  All these impressions, intentionally or accidentally perceived, from which the said localizations are formed ought to be in them only as material for confrontative logic for that real being-consciousness which they should have in themselves, ...

• Discussion

  N said the five senses were not enough to acquire objective reason. T said that objective reason wins, but were we not utterly subjective? N said that for most of the time, we were living in subjective reason. Gurdjieff, all the time, was stressing objectivity and objective reason. N said he thought we found it very hard to pronounce objective truths or objective beauty. We may see it once in a while, like when walking into a Gothic cathedral, when you will for a moment have an experience of objective beauty. T said that through creativity there might be some deep connection with something that was outside of us, and it gets through to us.

• Passage

  of at least adapting their famous education to the said subconsciousness of their offspring, but that they always and in everything intentionally assist every one of the rising generation to perceive impressions only from the abnormally artificial, then thanks only to this, when every one of them reaches the age of a responsible being all his being-judgments and all his deductions from them are always purely peculiarly-subjective in him and have no connection not only with the genuine being-impulses arising also in him, but also neither with those general cosmic lawful phenomena, to sense which by Reason is proper to every three-brained being ...

• Discussion

  J said we acquire many concepts externally, which may not originate from within ourselves, suggesting these are artificial constructs rather than genuine impulses.

  N thought the text contained a message that we did not grasp objective reason, and that Gurdjieff placed objective reason as a high-level goal for humanity.