Birds of a Feather

Reflections on the Challenge

When you express an opinion, listen to the sound of your own voice. Does it ring true, as if from the heart? Consider on what experience it is based.

• Experiences

  L had worked earnestly with the challenge and noticed that his voice changed not when he was being insincere, but when he spoke from the heart. In today’s climate, he felt it difficult to speak openly unless with someone deeply trusted. His observation was that the voice itself revealed this tension — becoming different precisely when sincerity was present.

  J reflected that his tone differed according to how deeply his emotions were engaged. When speaking from conviction, he aimed to express genuine feeling rather than detached commentary. He noted the importance of pausing before speaking — ensuring his words conveyed sincerity rather than cleverness. In practice, however, he found that when offering what he believed to be genuine advice, his tone hardly changed; the real work lay in maintaining that inner check before opening his mouth.

  N had found the challenge revealing, recognising that his voice changed noticeably when he spoke without real knowledge or conviction. As a lawyer, he was accustomed to projecting a certain tone in court — persuasive but not wholly authentic. He saw that this professional habit could carry a subtle falseness, detectable in the voice itself. At moments he could hear the difference: a faint echo of self-awareness reminding him that he was speaking beyond his true understanding.

• Responses

  L responded to J by noting that his account illustrated Gurdjieff’s Law of Three in action. The initial impulse to speak formed the affirming force; the awareness of slipping into wiseacring became the denying; and the conscious decision to speak sincerely was the reconciling. Turning to N’s experience, L likened the lawyer’s performative voice to a necessary role within an adversarial process — affirming and denying forces awaiting reconciliation in the judge’s discernment.

  T picked up on N’s remarks, recalling the courtroom oath “to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,” and asked whether this applied equally to lawyers.

  N replied that advocates were indeed bound by strict duties to the court, though not all upheld them. He reflected that even outside legal settings, people’s voices often betrayed when they strayed beyond real knowledge. This, he said, showed the emotional centre intruding into intellectual speech — a covering of uncertainty with feeling.

  L quipped that such composure was rare among politicians, provoking comments that many leaders spoke entirely “from the head,” lacking heart.

  J then returned to L’s point, agreeing that the threefold process applied, but adding that awareness should ideally arise before speech — the mind engaging before the mouth. He compared courtroom or public presentation to chairing a meeting or compering an event: one must address the audience sincerely, even when not emotionally involved. Sincerity, he suggested, depended on conscious awareness of one’s audience, not on emotional intensity.

  N agreed, observing that in advocacy, as in ordinary conversation, truth could blur when the wish to protect or persuade became dominant.

  L concluded by distinguishing the Law of Three at the moment of speech from the broader Law of Seven, which governed the unfolding of any event. Speaking or chairing, he said, followed a seven-stage rhythm: preparation, opening, climax, and resolution — each with its own energy.

  T observed that once others were involved, the dynamic became less controllable; new forces entered from outside.

  L expanded that these influences — whether from people or the “numinous nature of reality” — could appear as coincidences or interruptions, from neighbours’ music to unexpected alarms. Such moments, he said, illustrated how processes at different scales interweave within the pattern of sevenfoldness.

Beelzebub’s Tales, Chapter 33

• Passage

  ... the people who represent the very “Tzimus” of contemporary European civilization, namely, those who arise and dwell on the continent Europe, must infallibly be called peacocks, that is, the birds who have the most beautiful and most gorgeous exterior, while the people who dwell on other continents must be called crows, that is, the most good-for-nothing and dirty of all birds.

  ...for those contemporary people who, on the contrary, appear on “God’s Earth” on any continent and obtain their further “stuffing” under the conditions arising and reigning on the continent Europe, no better “comparison” can be found than the bird turkey.

  “‘This latter bird, more than all other birds, expresses a something which is neither fish, flesh, fowl, nor good red herring, but which represents in itself, as is said, “a-half-with-a-quarter-plus-three-quarters.”

• Discussion

  J reflected on the curious phrase “a-half-with-a-quarter-plus-three-quarters,” seeing it as Gurdjieff’s caricature of pretension—people or nations puffing themselves up to appear more than they are.

  N added that the three birds suggest stages of aspiration: the coarse crow seeking refinement, the turkey striving toward the peacock’s brilliance. He compared this to peoples or individuals borrowing the manners of a “higher type” while lacking its substance—a pattern still visible in modern life.